The Christina-Taylor Green Memorial River Park is clean and serviceable but doesn’t quite capture the soul of its spirited young namesake.
Christina-Taylor’s family is hoping to change that.
Blueprints for a new, better Christina-Taylor Green Memorial River Park call for adding kid-friendly elements reflective of the third-grader, who lost her life five years ago today in the Jan. 8, 2011, Tucson mass shooting.
A butterfly garden, a colorful plaza area with picnic tables, and a statue of playing children are all part of plans to enhance the county park that honors Christina-Taylor.
The Greens are working with the county on a public-private partnership to pay for improvements at the northwest-side linear park, which runs between North Thornydale and West Magee roads.
One of the key features will be botanical and desert trails and gardens, with educational signs identifying native plants and water-harvesting principles.
Nine years old when she died, Christina-Taylor was the youngest of the six people murdered when a gunman opened fire during an outdoor “Congress on Your Corner” event hosted by then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a northwest-side shopping center.
Described as extroverted and curious, Christina-Taylor attended the Congress on Your Corner event with an older neighbor to learn more about government. She’d just been elected to the student council at Mesa Verde Elementary School when she died.
“What better way to honor her than to make a nice gathering area for families, make the park more usable for everyone,” said Christina-Taylor’s father, John Green.
At 10 a.m. Saturday, county officials and the Green family will hold a ceremony to unveil a memorial sign and launch an effort to renovate the park.
The event will be at the main entrance of the park, which is at the southwest corner of Shannon and Magee roads, across the street from the Northwest YMCA, 7770 N. Shannon Road.
Saturday’s event will be part of a day of activities called “Beyond Tucson” — an annual occasion that grew out of the 2011 shooting tragedy. The family of 30-year-old Gabe Zimmerman, who also was killed that day, started Beyond Tucson as a positive, communitywide response to a terrible event. It is a way of committing to a better future, the Zimmerman family has said.
The Green family has also chosen to focus on positive responses to the loss of their daughter, who would be 14 were she still alive today. They ran a foundation that gave away all the money donated in memory of their daughter in the aftermath of the shooting to schoolchildren in need, and raised money for the charity.
The foundation built playgrounds and computer labs, improved school libraries and donated whiteboards and school supplies. The family still partners with Team Up For Tucson to collect toys for children every Christmas.
Though the Greens initially stayed away from any activism on gun control, continued mass shootings led them to get involved.
Roxanna Green, Christina-Taylor’s mother, has become a public face in a national effort to curb gun violence through stricter laws. She travels the country speaking out for what she calls “common-sense” regulations on firearms. She meets with national leaders, is featured in a public-service announcement and often makes media appearances on the subject.
The Greens were at the White House as guests of President Obama Tuesday, when he issued his executive order mandating background checks for purchases at gun shows.
While gun safety remains important for the Greens, the park project is now a top priority too. The park is close to the Green family’s home and it’s where Christina-Taylor and her brother, Dallas, used to play together, running around the wash, going under the bridge and playing in puddles and mud when it rained.
Passing by the park on a nearly daily basis after the shooting, the Greens have always loved that it was dedicated to Christina-Taylor. But as they regained time and energy in the aftermath of losing their only daughter, they increasingly felt the park had more potential.
Its bathrooms, water fountain and benches are nice for visitors, but two acres directly on the corner of Shannon and Magee remained sparse and sterile. To Christina-Taylor’s family, it was a blank canvas.
“We approached the county and talked about raising money to beautify the whole area,” John said. “The infrastructure is already in place, the land is there. It will save money.”
The butterfly garden is a way of honoring Christina-Taylor’s love of butterflies. A drawing she did of a butterfly shortly before she died became the logo for the memorial foundation her family operated between 2011 and 2014. The butterfly she drew has a green face, yellow and black antennae, and expansive wings of blues, greens and yellows.
The family envisions a butterfly garden being similarly colorful with decorative features and desert plants that attract the insects.
The project has an estimated cost of $137,000. Pima County has pledged an in-kind contribution of $52,000 in material and labor, said Valerie Samoy, special assistant for Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation.
The Green family is trying to raise $85,000 in private funding for the balance of the cost via a social media campaign through GoFundMe and the county’s Parklands Foundation.
The fundraising campaign will last one year or until the $85,000 is raised. The tentative completion date is June 2017, though that timetable could be moved up.
“We’re hoping to get started once the family raises the money. I was told we could do it in phases, starting with the gardens and paths,” Samoy said.
The first public-private park project here was the Brandi Fenton Memorial Park, 3482 E. River Road, a popular park that opened in 2006 with $1.5 million raised by the family of Tucson resident Brandi Fenton, who was 13 when she died in a car crash in 2003.
Another private partnership with $30,000 in private funds improved the dog park at Brandi Fenton with money raised from the family of another Tucson resident, Austin FitzGerald, 19, who died in 2013 after a 17-day battle with acute lung failure.
Samoy said the recent failure of bond projects that would have made improvements in county parks means public-private partnerships could become a trend.
The Green family says that since the park is a place where Christina-Taylor first played when the family moved to Tucson, they cannot think of a more fitting legacy for their daughter.
“Generations of children will be able to enjoy it,” her father said.
