transform your church outdoor space into a community hub with placemaking

Placemaking turns empty spaces into vibrant places for community connection.

Whether adding a garden, a walking path, a pickle ball court or a dog park, your outdoor space can be a venue for building relationships, not just another yard to mow or parking lot to plow.

Five benefits of placemaking

  • Placemaking empowers your church to demonstrate its mission and heart in a tangible and interactive way that’s visible and easily accessible to neighbors who may not otherwise come inside.

  • Placemaking allows your church to visibly express a warm welcome towards neighbors.

  • Placemaking provides meaningful places for congregants to build deeper connections with each other and with neighbors who don’t attend the church.

  • Placemaking is extremely flexible and responsive to the needs and capacities of your congregation. You can start small, spend less and grow gradually.

  • Since placemaking projects are smaller in scale, it's easier to implement quickly, see what’s working (or not) and adjust accordingly.

Meet your placemaking coach

Sara Joy Proppe, Proximity Project Founder

Sara Joy is passionate about equipping churches to be the hands and feet of Jesus in their neighborhoods through faithful and creative property stewardship.

With over a decade of professional experience in leading community placemaking work and real estate development throughout the Midwest, she uses these skills to guide churches in reimagining and renewing their properties.

She is co-author of two placemaking toolkits:

get started with Free ideas

Download Five Easy Placemaking Ideas

How we can help

beyond placemaking, Our Services are designed to address a variety of needs, including:

Placemaking Strategy

Real Estate Coaching

Property Analysis

Congregational Listening

Neighborhood Connecting

“When Trinity City Church purchased a new building, we asked Sara Joy from Proximity Project to help us develop a plan to use the property for the common good of our city. She not only gave us the framework to cast a vision for this plan, but she also gave us tangible examples and steps to take in order to accomplish it.”
— Bryan L. | Trinity City Church

ready to learn more about placemaking?

We’re here to help you imagine something beautiful.