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The $850,000 project, completed in 2005, has won the Phoenix Award for Community Impact.
The Phoenix Awards Institute is a national nonprofit group, based in Mechanicsburg, that honors groups that transform blighted areas into new significant community assets.
The Roberto Clemente Park project won the overall Community Impact Award.
The site was long a weedy field and baseball diamond created when row homes along South Duke Street were razed in the 1960s as part of an urban renewal project.
A diverse array of groups partnered to create a well-maintained 3.5-acre park that includes a flower-shaped playground, ball diamond and a pavilion for picnics.
The collaboration included the South Duke Street Neighborhood Task Force, Inner City Group, Lancaster County Planning Commission, High Companies, Weed & Seed, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region III and Environmental Standards Inc.
"There's no substitute for having a good community process for deciding what needs to happen at a site," said Jane Pugliese, director of housing and economic planning for the county Planning Commission, and former director of Inner City Group.
"If we had gone ahead and just improved Roberto Clemente Park without input from the neighborhood, by now the park would have deteriorated back to a blighted condition because the neighborhood would not have had any sense of ownership of the park.
"Because the neighborhood was a decisive force in deciding what improvements were to be made and how it was going to be managed, the park has continued to be a well-maintained recreational area and neighborhood asset used by all."
