The Parking Yard

It's more than a parking lot

Parking lots dot our urban landscape. At CAFAC, our small parking lot is used daily for its intended purpose - a place for students and artists to put their cars. Our vision is to turn this utilitarian space into something with greater purpose and impact on our community.

The issues

1. It's getting crowded at CAFAC. A lot of different programs compete for space every day and while we've set up the facility to be as flexible as possible, we've reached the point where we have to expand in order to sustain and grow. Our metal casting department in particular needs more space and better facilities.
2. That parking lot is in bad shape. It's surrounded by ugly chain link and a dilapidated wood fence, and has serious sinkholes that create Lake CAFAC whenever it rains. It's become a safety as well as an aesthetic issue. It looks bad and our neighborhood deserves better.
3. In densely built urban settings, stormwater runs off buildings and other impervious surfaces and into the City sewer. By better managing that stormwater runoff, we can divert as much of 90% of our annual runoff into systems that infiltrate rather than dump water into the sewer - like permeable pavers and rain gardens. 

The solution 

We've put together a plan to address these issues in a series of phases. 

First, we'll build a new a storage structure and outdoor teaching space in the back corner of our parking lot. This will accommodate an expansion of our metal casting program and let us hide away a ton of materials and scrap that we use in our programs and projects. We are currently working towards obtaining a construction permit and finding contractors to take on this small but mighty project!

Next, thanks to a Hennepin County Good Steward grant, we are in the design phase of a new stormwater conveyance and cistern system that will also carry water from our building's roof to future rain gardens and a permeable pavement driveway. Goodbye Lake CAFAC!

Community engagement is a component of many of our public art projects, and this one is no different. We'll  invite community members to participate in a series of workshops to help us create enameled steel elements for the stormwater conveyance. The goal is to use art to draw attention to the potential of environmentally-responsible design.  

Together,  these elements form a comprehensive project that will have programmatic, aesthetic, safety, and environmental impact for CAFAC. We'll transform an ugly, rundown parking lot into a Parking Yard that's attractive and functional!

It isn't a small undertaking and your support will make it possible! 

We've secured partial funding for the expenses related to building the storage structure and expanded outdoor teaching area for the metal casting program, as well as for the stormwater and cistern system. To complete these phases, we need to close a funding gap of $30,000.