Forest Park Forever

Park operations and maintenance: Forest Park Forever partners with the city of st. louis to maintain the city's largest Park to accomodate 15.5 million visitors annually. Our nonprofit employs a team of horticulturists, gardeners, nature reserve technicians and an ecologist to maintain the Park's landscapes and natural areas, and engineering, maintenance and landscape architecture professionals who coordinate with the city and contractors to maintain and repair Park infrastructure, including sidewalks and roads, recreational facilities and fields, statues and monuments.

Education, volunteer, and visitor services - Forest Park Forever operates the dennis and judith jones visitor and education center in partnership with explore st. louis. This center welcomes and assists Park users by providing Forest Park maps, information and directions and access to visitor resources for the st. louis region. The center also serves as a gathering spot for runners, walkers and cyclists, birders, and various fitness groups. Visitor services are delivered via trained and knowledgeable paid staff and volunteers. The center includes a cafe, special event and meeting spaces, classrooms, exhibit space, public restrooms, secure locker facilities, a fully accessible playground, racquetball and handball courts, free public wifi and a bike repair station. In 2023 an estimated 210,000 visitors and Park users came through the visitor and education center, and our visitor services team provided over 23,000 direct visitor assists.

Forest Park Forever maintains funding to be able to flexibly address the Park's long-term and short-term needs while ensuring continued Park access for visitors. Funds are also raised for multi-year capital projects that restore or improve major Park features, and which Forest Park Forever implements. In 2023 such projects included advancing multi-year restoration of three lakes on the east side of the Park, and community engagement and design work for adding basketball courts and for redeveloping the historic steinberg skating rink, pavillion and its surroundings.

Communication/community awareness - Forest Park Forever serves as a hub of information for the st. louis region on amenities and events in Forest Park, Park improvements and temporary traffic closures, and cultural offerings. These are communicated through three seasonal print newsletters, bi-weekly email newsletters, social media, public website with 400,000 annual visits, and visitor center staff responding to in-person questions. The organization publishes a free visitor guide with maps of the Park and its amenities, distributed in the Park and at regional tourist destinations, and it manages a free interactive, gps enabled online map that engages 140,000 users annually.