SBNA Awarded American Rescue Plan Act Park Activation Grant Funds

Today we received official notification that SBNA has been awarded $8,000 in American Rescue Plan Act Park Activation Grant funds to facilitate a series of neighborhood celebrations in our community’s parks.

The ARPA Park Activation Grant sets aside $500,000 in federal funding for communities to hold events and other programs in our public parks to help “activate” these parks. Park Activation means getting people out into the park to enjoy our open spaces and enrich our community.

The City of Phoenix Parks & Recreation Department published a list of 80+ city parks that would be eligible for this grant program based on those parks’ proximity to U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development “Qualified Census Tracts”—and the original eligibility list did not include any of the six recognized neighborhood parks within the Cave Creek Park system.

As a result of our perseverance and relentless advocacy with the Parks Department and through our City Council member Councilwoman Debra Stark’s office, all six of our city parks were added to the eligibility list. This allowed not just Shaw Butte Neighborhood Alliance but all neighborhood groups to apply for funding to hold events and programs in our parks.

We proposed a series of “Neighborhood Celebrations” to bring our community together with simply amenities like bounce houses, music, free art projects and other activities, and we were awarded $8,000 in funding—to be awarded in January 2024.

This is a HUGE win for our community, because the Neighborhood Block Watch Grant Program does not start disbursing 2024 funding until August 2024—so these funds will be critical to our block watch activities for next year.

Our final dates and specific plans are still to be determined, and we will share updates as soon as they become available.