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1993–2000 — the private campaign
The gift: Downtown's floodplain park exists because a commission raised 10 million dollars from the private sector between 1993 and 2000 — businesses, foundations and residents giving to build Headwaters Park on land that had flooded for a century — and raised roughly 1 million dollars more as a maintenance endowment. It is the largest collective gift in this record: no single lead donor is named in the record reached, and that is the fact of it — the park was bought by a city, in pieces. The Headwaters Park Alliance that succeeded the commission raised more than 5 million dollars in its first decade and, by Geoff Paddock's 2023 account, some 15 million dollars across three decades. Inside the park, the pattern repeats at smaller scale: the Rothschild Pavilion was paid for entirely by a Madge Rothschild Foundation grant, and the Lincoln Pavilion almost entirely with private dollars — documented as structures, with their amounts unpublished. The park's own history is in the Parks leg; the ten million is the gift, and it belongs here.
Sources:
- Headwaters Park historical marker text and Headwaters Park Alliance accounts — the 10 million dollar private campaign and the maintenance endowment.
- Geoff Paddock, Headwaters Park Alliance (2023) — the Alliance's cumulative fundraising.