Hip-hop-founded nonprofit to open free AI park in Wellington Heights this August
The Big Bang Foundation is converting a vacant lot at 605 15th St SE into a solar-powered micro park with a shipping-container AI lab, VR, 3D printing, and an augmented-reality garden trail.
A Cedar Rapids nonprofit started by local hip-hop artists plans to open a free, solar-powered AI Micro Park in the Wellington Heights neighborhood this August, turning a vacant lot at 605 15th St SE into a community tech hub built around a two-level shipping-container lab.
The Big Bang Foundation, a 501(c)(3) formed in 2016, says the park will include an AI Creator Lab equipped with virtual-reality and 3D-printing gear, outdoor kiosks offering access to tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT, and an IoT-monitored community garden with an augmented-reality learning trail. Admission will be free to the public.
Co-founders Chuck Crawley, Jorel Robinson, Antonio Chalmers, and Anthony Teague each bring a different specialty — real estate, AI, music, and community organizing — to the project. Crawley, the executive director, said the group originally came together to "combat gun violence with books" and has since run the "Lights On" youth mentorship program at McKinley Middle School and produced the Iowa Summer Jam festival.
Robinson, who leads strategy and partnerships, described the vision as "turning lots into labs and ideas into tangible impact." Chalmers, known professionally as Tone Da Boss, said the park "embodies all of that" expertise in a single neighborhood-scale space where "kids, students, anybody can come and they can create or take an idea or a concept and then turn it into a digital asset."
The foundation is raising money for construction and ongoing maintenance partly through sales of an AI-generated coloring book, "Tiny Prompters, Big Ideas: A Prompt Engineering Coloring Book," available on Amazon. A dedicated project website, theaipark.com, lists the August 2025 target opening.
City permit status for the shipping-container structure, the site's acreage, the lab's visitor capacity, and any formal tech-company partnerships have not been publicly confirmed. The foundation has not released a total project budget or fundraising total.
Sources
- 1.Nonprofit bringing artificial intelligence park to Cedar Rapids neighborhood — KCRG (Gray Television)
- 2.Big Bang Foundation to open solar-powered AI Micro Park in Cedar Rapids — Corridor Business Journal
- 3.AI Micro Park - Cedar Rapids' Hub for Youth Innovation — Big Bang Foundation
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