Parklets for Downtown Mansfield!

Parklets. Great for social distancing. Great for creating a pedestrian-friendly environment. Great for building interest and foot traffic.

This pandemic has created a need for new ways to conduct business, ways that maintain social distancing, encourage safe outdoor gathering and waiting, and also ways that just help people feel comfortable about their environment when outside their homes.

A proven method for creating outdoor spaces in an urban setting, like our Downtown, is the Parklet. If you are not already familiar with the concept, a Parklet is a protected gathering place that fits inside a parallel parking space. Many, many cities have been using Parklets, especially in rejuvenating neighborhoods, to create and encourage a pedestrian-friendly environment and entice people back into once-languishing areas such as rejuvenating downtowns.

In the spring of 2020, DMi began working with the Staff and Council of the City of Mansfield to develop a parklet enabling plan that would maximize safety and minimize time involved in permitting parklets. That plan was rolled out in late July of 2020, and DMi received the first Permit for a parklet today, August 4th.

Thanks to a generous donation by Panorama Antenna of Mansfield, and seed money and time by DMi, the first parklet (D-Parklet 127) is now fully funded, and we hope to begin construction within the next few days at 127 N. Main Street. This first parklet will be a testing ground for a planned modular design, that, if successful, should reduce the time and money (per square foot) that will be necessary for future parklets. You can find design sketches for D-Parklet 127 here on our website.