Plum Street Park

Media Borough plans to rehabilitate Plum Street Mall as a passive-use, pedestrian-friendly, downtown park.  It is sited in an area that is within a 15-minute walk of most Media residents.  Neighbors of all ages and abilities will have a beautiful green space in which they can meet each other, chat, relax, eat lunch and enjoy nature.  Children will have an open area in which they can run and play.  The park will encourage exercise and support the health of the community by providing a destination for walkers, joggers and bicyclists.

A green community, Media Borough and its residents support projects that increase livability and sustainability. Working against residents’ desire for more green, recreational areas, Media is a built-up, paved-over town, with little remaining open space and few parks.  Because of its dense development and an antiquated storm sewer system, the borough also faces significant stormwater management problems. 

In response to both the cry for more open space and the need to increase infiltration of stormwater, Borough Council has turned its attention to opportunities to convert available lots and paved areas into small parks and green spaces.   These sites will meet the needs of our residents and visitors for recreation, outdoor leisure activities and contact with nature.  They will also address the borough’s stormwater run-off issues; each site will incorporate green infrastructure design such as rain gardens, bio-retention basins and tree trenches. Dimond Park and the recently completed park at 5th & Broomall Streets are examples of this initiative.

The project site – Plum Street Mall between Jasper and State Streets – was identified by a stakeholder group several years ago in a series of meetings to plan a creative placemaking project.  The many great ideas that were brainstormed pointed to three basic needs that were not being met: 

• The need for more public gathering spaces, where people can meet and interact on a casual friendly basis
• The need for more green space
• The need for places for public art

The group envisioned a green central square in the middle of Media’s downtown.  Most of the specific project elements in the project concept plans (see link below) emerged out of group discussions and from a public survey posted subsequently on the borough website. 

The stakeholder group and survey respondents established a set of goals for a renovation of the Mall: 

• Incorporate nature into the Mall—trees, plantings, trellises, perennial flowers—creating an artful and inviting environmental design
• Redesign the mall to facilitate pedestrian flow
• Create a friendly meeting place to promote social interaction in the Borough, with thoughtfully-placed seating and tables
• Integrate water, lighting and shade elements into the design
• Maintain a small multi-use open space for music and performances. 
• Include space for public art projects

Preliminary Design Sketches for Plum Street Mall

Based on the previous community discussions and survey results, the Borough worked with a landscape architect from NV5 to produce a series of sketches for the Mall.   These are preliminary concept plans and will be fine-tuned as we move into the final design phase.