You may remember that last year, the City of Chattanooga joined the Trust for Public Land's 10-minute walk campaign.

Now, Red Bank is following suit.

If case you forgot: the campaign works to ensure that every resident has access to a quality park or green space within a 10-minute walk of home.

The current stats:

25% of Red Bank residents have access to a park or green space within a 10-minute walk from home (according to ParkServe).
Worth noting, though, is that not everyone in that 25% is within a safe or easy 10-minute walk from home to a park.
Red Bank sits at ~6.5 square miles, which means that technically, less parks are needed to meet this goal than in a larger city like Chattanooga.

The goal is to make a walk to White Oak Park easy and safe for folks living along the busy Memorial Drive. | Photo by NOOGAtoday

How Red Bank + TPL hope to reach the goal:

Red Bank budgeted for + will soon be hiring its first-ever parks employee.
A large focus of the campaign will include adding park space to northern Red Bank — currently, Kids Corner Playground is the city's northernmost park.
Another focus will lie in connecting pre-existing parks in the southern part of Red Bank. In particular, the city and TPL want folks to be able to get from White Oak Park to Kids Corner Playground safely + efficiently.
A new "bicycle boulevard" is part of the plan to connect these parks, and also happens to be phase 1 of the 10-year NorthShore Greenway project.
Thanks to the partnership with TPL, Red Bank will gain access to tools and assistance in park mapping, securing land, and more.

Get involved

TPL will take an intentional approach to gathering community input for the project. Public input sessions (think: Where do you think Red Bank most needs a park? What are you looking for in a parks space?) are planned — stay tuned for more info on upcoming sessions via Red Bank's website and newsletter.