Sports as Infrastructure for Community Transformation with Duane Kinnon

This workshop introduces a clear, place-based strategy for using sports as community infrastructure to advance youth development, economic mobility, and neighborhood revitalization. Drawing on Duane Kinnon’s work in Brooklyn, NY, the session explains how a once-overlooked community now benefits from more than $120 million in coordinated investments in parks, schools, and athletic facilities. Participants will learn how timing, strategy, and intentional community sports programming helped leverage redevelopment by aligning public space with schools, community-based organizations, faith institutions, and local businesses. The workshop equips attendees with practical insights on activating public investments, building cross-sector partnerships, and designing scalable sports-centered ecosystems that turn capital improvements into lasting community impact.

Registration required. Walk-ins will be accepted until we have reached capacity.

Duane Kinnon is an award-winning nonprofit executive, business consultant, and urban strategist, and the Founder and CEO of the National Sports Zone Foundation (NSZF). He also serves as Chairman of Friends of Brownsville Parks, where his leadership has advanced large-scale, place-based investment strategies centered on youth, families, and community infrastructure.

To improve communities for youth and their families, Duane leads complex, multi-sector collaborations aligning parks, schools, public housing, community-based organizations, businesses, and government agencies, with deep engagement across New York City, including the Mayor’s Office of Tech Innovation, NYC Parks, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and the NYC Police Department. His work focuses on converting public and private capital into scalable, replicable ecosystems that deliver sustained social and economic returns.

The National Sports Zone Foundation mobilizes 70+ partner cross-sector alliances operating across New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, South Florida, and Los Angeles, spanning schools, parks, housing authorities, nonprofits, sports leagues, public agencies, colleges, and industry leaders to deliver scalable, place-based impact.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Enoch Pratt Free Library