• Home
• News
• Archive
• About
• Calendar
• Directory
• Advertisers
• Contact Us

BUSINESS BRIEFS

Novartis Park opened on Community Day

John VanLandingham
The Emeryville Connection Staff
June 2007

Novartis kicked off its first Community Partnership Day in Emeryville by opening a brand new city park and sending nearly 400 employees to volunteer in the community.

The April 26 event drew a large crowd to witness the opening of the Hollis Green (Novartis Park), a former parking lot directly across the street from the Novartis campus. City officials, several City Council members, Novartis executives and employees and Emeryville residents crowded in to participate in the opening of Emeryville’s seventh and newest park.

Employees, in T-shirts announcing “Novartis Community Partnership Day” and the legend “People helping people” on the back, fanned out across Emeryville to the high school, the Child Development Center, the Senior Center, Recreation Center and beyond to the East Bay Regional Park District, the Oakland Zoo, Red Cross, Children’s Hospital and the Alameda County Food Bank.

There they washed windows, built homes, donated and delivered food to low-income residents, supported an on-site blood drive, painted murals, cleaned floors and cleaned parks and schools.

Although Novartis has held a Community Partnership Day annually for the last decade around the world, the April 26 occasion was the first in Emeryville since Novartis bought out Chiron approximately a year ago.

“This is the first time I’ve felt such a substantial connection to the community,” Meghan Leader, Novartis’s Head of Global Business Operations, said during the park opening ceremonies.

“This belongs to all of us,” Leader declared as she and Mayor Nora Davis officially opened the park to cheers and applause.

“It’s another example that we take our commitment seriously. We back up our words with action. Corporate citizenship is the key to who we are,” she continued. “We care about our community. We take no more than we give back.”

Mayor Davis praised Novartis and the park.

“This park is a symbol of Novartis’s commitment to the community‑‑ over 350 men and women to aid in our schools and all through the community. Their energy and synergy are just a symbol of their long-standing commitment to this community,” she said.

The 30,000-square-foot private park at the southwest corner of 53rd and Hollis streets, which is publicly accessible, occupies a former visitors’ parking lot. Its planting beds and fountain will give workers in the area an escape during the day and its redwood and cherry trees eventually will shade the visitors’ benches. The park is open to the public during daylight hours.

Surveying her audience, Leader remarked about how the park symbolized how far Emeryville has come in recent years. “We’ve got Pixar, Bay Street, this gorgeous building (Novartis’s) and this new park. They’re all signs that Emeryville has come a long way.”

After the ceremonies, Leader joined a handful of other Novartis employees at the child development center washing windows, painting paper murals, cleaning and sprucing up the facility.

^{John VanLandingham is a writer for The Emeryville Connection. If you have a question or comment, please contact him at ecocnews@gmail.com}