A Story of Hard Work, Success, and the Power of Giving Back
This June, Grocery Outlet Bargain Market will celebrate 43 years of business in Redding.
At 17, Ron Davis Jr. helped pack up his Mom and siblings and move south to Redding to join his Dad, who had just opened a Grocery Outlet store in an old lumber warehouse that looked like a barn on Hwy 273. The building had 11,500 sq ft of oak plank flooring. Ron remembers long days sanding every inch, then sealing it. For the next 35 years, father and son worked in partnership to successfully run and grow their business.
Ron Davis, Jr.
In 1997, the original Grocery Outlet store moved to the current Churn Creek location. In 2019, Ron, along with his daughter Tabitha and son Ron III, opened a second store on Eureka Way. This June, they will celebrate 43 years of business in Redding. Ron loves living and shopping locally in the Redding community. He also loves giving back to the community that has given so much to him.
The Redding Parks and Trails Foundation has been an independent 501c3 non-profit organization since 2017. Our mission is to enhance the Redding community by supporting a thriving, vibrant system of parks, trails, and open spaces. We support projects and public places managed by the City of Redding Community Services Department, as well as trails and recreation-related projects that are initiated by the community.
Our signature fundraiser, Vine and Dine for Parks, was created to raise funds every year for a worthy project. The event features local Chefs preparing samples of their signature dishes for event attendees. Each sample is paired with a different wine generously donated by Redding Grocery Outlets to further enhance the experience. The event also features a Silent Auction and music. The Foundation is committed to raising at least $15,000 annually through this event.
We needed a generous underwriter to help offset event costs to meet this fundraising goal. The Foundation is incredibly grateful for its partnership with Ron Davis Jr.. Since 2016, Redding Grocery Outlet has been the event sponsor and a strategic partner in raising over $50,000 to support the following projects: Kids Kingdom 2.0 (2016), the Jr. Bike Park in Caldwell Park (2018), the Pickleball Court Expansion at Enterprise Park (2019), and the Cumberland Park Playground Project (2022). This year’s event, the 2023 Vine and Dine for Parks, is raising money for the new destination Redding Bike Park, part of the 2022 Caldwell Park Expansion Project.
Ron’s philosophy is simple. He believes “any business that the community supports should find ways to give back to the community.“ Ron understands the power of community parks, trails, and open spaces. He feels these assets produce tangible health, social, and well-being benefits for all ages, especially kids. His continued generous support of Vine and Dine for Parks reflects his commitment to doing whatever he can to beautify our community and offer safe, fun places to enjoy, not just for his six children and 13 grandchildren, but for everyone.
So, when you shop at a Redding Grocery Outlet store, you will find high-quality food, beer, wine, produce, deli, health and beauty, general merchandise and fresh meat at great prices and support a local business passionate about improving our community!
In Search of the Best Deal: Got Parks?
We spend a lot of our time looking for the best “deal“ to enhance our lives. You know what I’m talking about—that one “thing” with the most value for the buck—a new vehicle, the food we eat, health insurance, gym membership, our children’s education, the family home. As individuals we constantly define and prioritize the “value” of the things we need to make ends meet and the things we want/need to enhance our lives.
On a community level, elected officials and city leadership are tasked with finding the best “deals” for an entire community. As they determine how to spend limited taxpayer monies they must weigh their answers to questions like these: What are the “must-have” necessities? What are simply amenities? What helps economic development? What brings in tourist dollars? What enhances the health, safety, and lives of everyone living in the community? What reaps the biggest dividends? It is certainly a daunting task to have to address the needs of people across diverse demographics, a task made even more difficult when you must prioritize them—assign a value—for funding within slim margins.
As community members, how would we answer those questions? What should we be investing in as a community that provides the biggest benefits for the most people? What gives all of us the biggest bang for our buck—not just now or in the next year—but 50 years in the future? The answers we come up with will help us advocate for the heart and soul of our community and help inform our elected officials what their constituents value most.
Our answer? We believe the best value Redding can give its citizens are our parks and trail system! This answer isn’t just because we are the Redding Parks and Trails Foundation. Communities across the country are realizing that investing in core park infrastructure brings them a huge return on their investment. These benefits cut across diverse demographics and socio-economic levels. Current research demonstrates that investing in parks helps create healthy, resilient, economically viable communities—not just in the short term, but for the long haul.
A cyclist rides on the Sacramento River Trail in Redding, Calif.
Ironically, the value of a park to a community is not a new idea! Fredrick Law Olmstead—the designer of New York’s Central Park and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—and other 19th century visionaries believed and preached that parks were not just amenities but necessities, providing recreation, inspiration, and essential respite from city ills. They could see that America was on the cusp of great change – moving from our beginnings as a rural, agricultural nation to one that was 85% urban centered. This meant that people would no longer reap the benefits of being surrounded by nature. People like Olmstead believed that large parks in cities could bring these benefits back to the people who lived in these new urban areas and should be available to all residents. Their efforts in creating large parks in cities across America was rooted in their belief and understanding that they were shaping the quality of life for America’s citizens for generations to come.
However, as populations shifted to the suburbs after World War II, this belief that parks offered significant value to communities faded. It was replaced with the idea that parks were simply nice features that had nothing to do with the viability of a community, an idea that resulted in many cities losing the resources to create new parks or revitalize existing ones. In many places today, parks continue to remain a low priority to fund with taxpayer dollars.
Recent studies are helping to change that mindset and communities and people are benefiting! This research demonstrates that parks bring social, environmental, economic, and health benefits that directly influence the health and vitality of a city:
Better Health Outcomes: Parks and open spaces improve overall physical and psychological health for residents of all ages
Stronger Community Bonds: Parks provide a common play space that allows for the development of social interactions and warmer relationships across diverse demographics.
Increased Tourism: Parks attract tourists, filling hotel rooms and bringing customers to local stores and restaurants.
Effective Marketing tool: As community signature pieces, parks offer a marketing tool for cities to attract businesses and conventions leading to economic development.
Economic Development Driver: Parks enhance property values, increase municipal revenue, bring in homebuyers and workers, and attract retirees
Enhanced Ecosystem Vitality: Green space in urban areas provides substantial ecosystem services. The U.S. Forest Service calculated that over a 50-year lifetime, one tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion.
Reduced Stormwater Management Costs: Incorporating trees and parks into a city’s infrastructure can decrease the necessary size of the city’s stormwater management system because a park’s trees store water, reducing the rate at which it flows into a city’s stormwater treatment facilities.
We are lucky to live in Redding, a community that clearly values parks! The City of Redding supports 41 parks, over 200 miles of trails, and numerous open spaces, resulting in a higher quality of life for all our residents. This hasn’t just been a fluke. It has taken vision, hard work, and a deep understanding that parks, open spaces, and trails are a necessity—a core infrastructure investment—that is vital to building healthy, resilient, growing communities, places any of us would want to call “home”!
Cyclists ride on the Sacramento River Trail in Redding, Calif.
Got PARKS?
Congratulations! You’ve found the best deal of all!
Resources
Falling in Love….with Redding’s Trails!
Redding’s trail system is quickly establishing not just a local reputation BUT a national one - for the breadth, depth, and high quality of our trails for walking and biking.
Redding’s trail system is quickly establishing not just a local reputation BUT a national one - for the breadth, depth, and high quality of our trails for walking and biking. This is thanks to the monumental and sustained efforts of federal land managers, local government, and local organizations over the last 25 years who have put their heart and soul into building over 80 miles of paved and dirt trails within the City limits. When you add the trails in the greater Redding area, that total exceeds over 200 miles….and counting! The hub of our trail system is the nationally recognized Sacramento River Trail, which was designated as a National Recreation Trail by the U.S. Department of the Interior in May of 2002.
What’s to love about a robust community trail system?
Trails provide a safe, inexpensive avenue for regular exercise for people living in rural, urban and suburban areas. Walking or biking on trails will do your heart and your health good!
Communities with trails provide enjoyable and safe options for transportation, which reduces air pollution.
Trails have the ability to physically connect different and important elements of nature in a city, provide biological connections and habitat linkages, and also to create important spaces for bringing people together.
Here in Redding, trails are at the heart of our community identity. Our trail system is part of a well designed community infrastructure plan that allows residents and visitors to enjoy the obvious recreational aspects of the trail network and to provide us the opportunity to get out of our cars and use non-motorized methods to commute to school or work, reach major retail and recreation destinations, or ride to the nearby Whiskeytown or Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Areas.
Our community’s love of trails isn’t slowing down. New trails are continuing to be built and planned by the City of Redding’s Parks and Recreation Department and through public private partnerships and collaborations. The Redding Parks and Trails Foundation has and will continue to act as a fiscal sponsor to support new trail construction. Watch for more updates and ways you can help in these efforts!
This February - and beyond! - make your heart happy by exploring our local trail system with someone you love, on your bike or with your own two feet!
Need a map?
City of Redding Trail Map; https://redding.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=640c661a7b4a4ffc9e207c0ccdf330a2
Healthy Shasta Trail Maps: https://healthyshasta.org/maps/
LOVE a challenge?
Join the Healthy Shasta Walks Passport Challenge
Join the 52 Hike Challenge:
https://www.52hikechallenge.com/products/2023-52-hike-challenge-free-signup
Access to Natural Open Spaces Helps Build Healthy Communities
Natural open spaces that are accessible to everyone are vital to building healthy communities. Learn more about what we do to preserve, restore and revitalize parks, trails, and open spaces in our community.
Open, undeveloped, natural spaces on the Sacramento River within the Redding city limits are few and far between. They are islands of untouched habitat, vital to the health of our local watershed ecosystem and all the flora and fauna that depend on it. Wild open spaces where citizens can surround themselves with nature offer often unrecognized health benefits (mental and physical) to local residents and visitors alike and they are spaces worth saving!
The Foundation has been involved with the preservation, restoration and revitalization of one of these natural, open spaces over the past several years in collaboration with the City of Redding and other partners. Called “Henderson Open Space” for many years, this unique area holds many historical artifacts within its boundaries. As part of this restoration process, its name was changed to Nur Pon Open Space which means “salmon run” in the Winnemem Wintu language, honoring the local indigenous people who lived in this area.
Nur Pon is home to a variety of habitats, including oak woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands. It is a popular destination for nature enthusiasts, birdwatchers, and hikers. The area features a diverse array of plant and animal life, including many species of birds, butterflies, and mammals. As part of the revitalization efforts, a new fish channel was dredged to provide a protected area for salmon to spawn.
Nur Pon Open Space is truly a hidden gem located along the Sacramento River. Nestled in the heart of the city, this peaceful oasis is a must-visit destination for anyone looking to escape the city and experience the beauty and healing powers of nature.
One of the highlights of Nur Pon Open Space is the Wetlands Interpretive Trail, which offers visitors the opportunity to learn about the importance of wetlands and their role in the ecosystem. The trail features interactive exhibits and informative signage, making it an educational and enjoyable experience for all ages. The area also includes a network of hiking trails that wind through the various habitats. The trails are well-maintained and offer a variety of terrain, making them suitable for hikers of all abilities.
Visitors to Nur Pon Open Space can enjoy a picnic on one of the picnic tables or take a break and relax on a bench while enjoying the peaceful surroundings. There are many new bridges throughout the area, a kayak launch and public restroom. The area is a designated off leash dog area.
Natural open spaces that are accessible to everyone are vital to building healthy communities. The Redding Parks and Trails Foundation will continue to look for opportunities to preserve, restore, and revitalize parks, trails, and open spaces in our community!