Santa Fes first`parklet transfers love to Llano Street

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Santa Fe has its first mobile parklet.

Its called The Love Transfer Station and has been placed on a vacant lot just north of De Vargas Middle School on Llano Street. It was built out of an old dumpster by local sculptor Don Kennell, landscape architect Christie Green and students from YouthWorks, with seating as well as landscaping with appropriate plants like sand love grass and eversweet strawberries that will look a lot better in the spring.

Artist Don Kennell, right, shows of the parklet he helped build. Its called The Love Tranfer Station and has been placed on an empty lot on Llano Street near De Vargas Middle School (Eddie Moore/Journal)

PNM Resources Foundation has provided $50,000 for The Transfer Love Station and two other forthcoming parklets, part of the citys Re:Mike effort to redevelop the St. MIchaels Drive corridor. But trailers also can be used to move the parklets around town. San Francisco is cited as a place where parklets come from.

The Mix Santa Fe group is part of the project. Mixs Daniel Werwath said the parklets are intended as a way to make the area more pedestrian friendly. They could be combined, for instance, with a mini-retail business created in a shipping container and/ or a food truck to make something of an activity center, he said.

Mayor Javier Gonzales lauded the project as part of the effort to redo the St.Mikes area over 15 to 20 years. He said the corridor now is 73 percent parking lot and needs concepts like this to make it better.

Artist Don Kennell, left, and Christie Green, a landscape designer, take part in a ceremony on Llano Street Monday to open a parklet they built called The Transfer Love Station. (Eddie Moore/Journal)

The parket features lots of red color, hearts and arrows. It started with the bare essentials and then it got down to, love, said sculptor Kennell. It began with an idea that could bring the most people together in some form of agreement or participation in the project, something inviting- it was either that or green chili.

The parklet has a large red heart shaped water cistern that can collect rain water and also be filled with water to irrigate the plants.

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Santa Fes first`parklet transfers love to Llano Street