Home Depot Foundation Coming to Marco

On Tuesday, October 21, more than 700 volunteers from The Home Depot and its vendor partners will descend on Marco Island to complete a massive, one-day refurbishment of Veterans Community Park and Winterberry Park as part of a $500,000 charitable grant from The Home Depot Foundation. 

The Home Depot Foundation is the company’s philanthropic arm and with its focus on veterans and veterans' housing, has donated more than $550 million to veterans' causes since 2011 and has pledged another $200 million going forward. 

According to Danny Watson, the foundation’s senior specialist leading the effort, Marco Island’s high concentration of veterans and the community’s support for them made Marco a perfect fit for the foundation’s largess. 

“Veterans Community Park was definitely an impetus for us,” Watson said.  “It was a great way for us to partner with the city because it’s a park dedicated to veterans, whichaligns perfectly with our values and focus as a foundation.” 

On an exploratory site visit with city officials earlier this year, Watson and others toured Winterberry Park and decided to expand the scope of the project to include refurbishment of that park as well. 

“The timing couldn’t have been more perfect,” said Samantha Malloy, the city’s Manager of Parks, Cultural and Recreation. “We brought them all over to Winterberry Park and there were senior softball players on the field watching us all point at things and talk.I grabbed a couple of them and told them the foundation was interested in doing work for veterans, and when we asked how many of them were veterans, half of them raised their hands. That really got the conversation going around Winterberry Park, too.” 

For the city, it’s a much-needed boost to its efforts to continually improve our community gathering spaces on a limited budget. 

“My mom growing up would always tell us even though we don’t have a lot of money, we’re never going to look that way,” said Daniel Smith, Director of Community Affairs for the city, describing the city’s approach to keeping our parks well-maintained in the face of budget constraints. “I always coined it as grandmother’s kitchen. It was always 20 or 25 years old, some of the color and style are dated, and you want to fix that up, but you never had the wherewithal to do it. And that’s what we hope to be doing with these parks.” 

Danny Watson at The Home Depot Foundation said the volunteer force will consist of Home Depot store associates (employees) and managers in company stores from Naples to Cape Coral; foundation staffersand company executives; and vendor partners attending a merchandising meeting that week at the JW Marriott. Subcontractors and other nonprofits are being deployed as part of the complex effort. 

According to a presentation to City Council on September 22, planned improvements at Winterberry Park include: a refresh of the announcer booth and dugout; field resurfacing; a batting cage facelift; a new Tuff Shed for storage, along with other projects. Veterans Community Park will undergo a dramatic re-landscaping to replace and upgrade plants lost in Hurricane Ian; extensive mulching and tree ring installations; a new hand-painted, South Florida-themed mural, and teak oiling of tables, chairs, and swings.   

At both parks and at Mackle Park, volunteers will also be involved in other veteran-related projects, including assembling new donated bikes and playhouses for veteran families; assembling decorative wooden American flags to give to local veterans; and building dressers for a local nonprofit focused on veterans’ housing. 

The presentation to City Council was given by a representative from Hands On Greater Phoenix, a more than 30-year partner of The Home Depot’s that is working alongside the foundation to plan the event. Hands On Phoenix brings a wealth of large-scale volunteer project management capability to the program and shares the foundation’s focus on veterans, the two organizations having done dozens of “days of service” helping veterans in the Phoenix area with various home improvement projects. 

According to Todd Byard, President and CEO of the organization, the Marco Island project dovetails with the kind of work it has done with The Home Depot Foundation in the past. 

“Home Depot not only puts the dollars behind our days of service, but they also bring skills, expertise, materials, and other resources,” Byard said.  “Over the last 15 years, we’ve helped veterans who are disabled from PTSD, are aging,or are on limited income see the benefits from improvements like house painting, grab bar installations, landscaping, and safety and infrastructure improvements. Together, we’ve become a vessel to allow those veterans to be able to live better lives.” 

City officials noted that Winterberry Park will be closed for activity from mid-October through about October 23rd to ensure all work is properly staged in advance and complete after. Parts of Veterans Community Park will also be closed the day of the project. A fleet of 15 transport buses will be shuttling volunteers to and from events, which might cause some light congestion around the worksites. No additional volunteers are needed or are permitted on the project sites.