An Open Streets Workshop Comes to Asbury Park
One of the Alliance for a Healthier Asbury Park’s main initiatives is to hold an Open Streets Event in the City to strengthen the community and promote healthy and active living. During the summer, we held a strategic planning workshop for the Open Streets Event led by Charles Brown, MPA, Senior Researcher at the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center (VTC) at Rutgers University, and a leading expert on Open Streets events that have been held around the world. Click here to learn more about Open Streets.
We’d like to thank the following residents of Asbury Park and members of our Boundary Spanning Leadership Team for participating in this energizing and informative workshop.
Nina Summerlin – Project Director, Alliance for a HealthierAsburyPark/President, Westside Citizens United- Krishna Murthy – Executive Director, EZ Ride
- Mike Manzella – Transportation Manager, City of Asbury Park
- Wendi Glassman – Member of the Mayor’s Wellness Committee
- Allison Cerco – Community Outreach Coordinator, Hackensack Meridian Health
- Brenda Carter – Ryde4Life Project Director, EZ Ride
- Pamela Major – Monmouth County Children’s Inter-agency Coordinating Council Board member
- Dianna Harris – Asbury Park Community Development Initiative/Midtown Urban Renaissance Corporation member
- Yvonne Clayton – Councilwoman, City of Asbury Park
- Angelica Stokes – Community Health Manager for Monmouth County
- B. Bennett – Teacher, Asbury Park School District & Founder of the Universal African American Festival
- Ericka Uter – Community Outreach Specialist, Prevention Coalition of Monmouth County
- Kathleen Melgar – Principal Library Assistant, Asbury Park Public Library
- Matthew Whelan – Assistant Director, Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce
- Felicia Simmons – Local Resident
- Trudy Syphax – Planning Board Member, City of Asbury Park
The workshop included a number of exercises and breakout sessions to help the planning team imagine how the Open Streets Event in Asbury Park could work; how to make it unique to the City, and begin to outline the detailed steps needed to reach the goal. The attendees explored topics such as the community’s demographics, potential route, date and time of the event, key stakeholders, programming ideas, volunteer recruitment, marketing strategies, measures of success, and branding the program.
Charles and his team are now working on a strategic document to hand off to the Alliance to execute the event. The Open Streets Event in Asbury Park is scheduled for May 2019, and the entire team is excited and ready to take on the planning and implementation of this important initiative! Stay up-to-date on developments regarding this initiative and the rest of our work by connecting with us on Facebook.