This is an open letter to property managers from across country.

The Park Catalog is the property managers' catalog.

The Park Catalog has been serving property managers for a long time because we know and understand the needs of both you and the properties you manage.

Property management companies and properties alike have reputations. "A dangerous parking lot," is not the reputation you want associated with your property.   We all aim to shine a positive light on public spaces, trying to promote testimonies like "Clean," "well lit," "safe" and "attractive." Site furnishings are the key to creating that positive environment and branding commercial and multi-family properties, an increasingly important factor as these markets have grown and consolidated over the past two decades.

For better or worse, the quality of your commercial site furnishings defines your property's brand, not entirely but in an outsized way relative to investment.  They ar

David Byrne with custom bike rac

I have admired David Byrne for as long as I can remember.

I was stuck by his unique and creative musical talents as a teenager. I was a child (teenager) of the eighties and there was no one on the musical scene like David Byrne and the Talking Heads. As I grew older, I lost track of Byrne and so many other great musicians, until he emerged as host of a Sunday evening PBS music program which was terrific. Over time I discovered we shared a passion for cycling as a form of transportation and a "vehicle" for exploration.  As fate would have it, we both see the bike rack as an opportunity for artistic expression that in a subtle way makes bicycle commuting a little more fun and cool.  Of all the products we design and sell at The Park Catalog, c

During the month of August I went to Seattle for the American Community Garden Association annual meeting. It was a reaffirming meeting with lots of helpful workshop information about how to be a better community gardener, how to work with the city, how to work with limited resources, and how to work with our neighbors.

People all over the country seem to have the same issues and some of the same answers, but it was the creative, fresh approaches that gave everyone at the conference a "WOW, why didn't I think of that?" More on that later.

The keynote speaker at the conference was a Muckleshoot Native American woman named Valerie Segrest. She stayed true to herself and delivered with an intelligent dry humor. She talked about how her tribe lived on a mountain plateau between the Green and White Rivers.

I failed to comprehend why she didn't say she lived near Seattle, which was named for an American Indian Chief. V

Who would think picnic tables could be so exciting? Well we do. One of our favorite experiences as a team at The Park Catalog is getting to hear back from our customers. Sometimes we get a phone call about adjusting a product's color or size and we are happy to help, reassured by the idea that our customers feel confident enough that we can get them exactly what they need. Other times our customers have great feedback about their experiences with our online order cart, helpful staff, comprehensive selection, or high quality picnic tables.

However, the best contact we get from customers is when we get a testimonial, and especially a picture,  of smiling faces from a successful site furnishing installation. A recent installation of elongated expanded metal picnic tables l

Wildlife conservation is a topic of importance today. We are making many changes in our lives to be more 'green'. Whether it is the shampoo we choose, riding our bike to work or taking shorter showers, there are many 'green' options to help minimize our negative impact on our environment. Finding the balance between the ever evolving human developments and maintaining nature's habitats is a difficult and pressing responsibility that organizations all over the world work to navigate every day.

Ecoducts are one of the many solutions that help to bridge that balance. They're structures that allow wildlife to cross man-made barriers, such as highways, safely. Habitat fragmentation, the division or separation of natural habitats by human development, is a threat to wildlife and these ecoducts allow the connection or reconnection of habitats that have been separated by our infrastructures.

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