Community Input Brings Life to Underutilized Parks
Picture this: it’s a perfect spring Saturday. Seventy degrees, breezy, powder blue sky. Birds are flitting between trees, singing songs of warmer weather. The air smells like mulch and just-bloomed flowers. You want to spend time with your kids outside, but everything that comes to mind costs money or requires driving. You wish there was a good park nearby, one that your family could easily walk to.
There’s a park down the road from your house, but it hasn’t been updated in years. The swings are rusted, there aren’t any picnic tables, the wooden border around the playground makes it hard to bring a stroller, there isn’t a bathroom, and the main piece of playground equipment is too small to keep everyone occupied. Since the park isn’t an option, you decide to take the kids on a walk, and when you pass the park, you see it’s completely empty. What’s a louder than that—a completely empty park on a beautiful spring day?
Checking the Pulse
Low park usage often stems from misalignment with the community’s needs. When creating a comprehensive parks and recreation master plan, we focus on listening to what residents want and need so that we can improve the parks in a way that satisfies residents and visitors. Parks and recreation opportunities build stronger and more resilient communities.
One of the goals of our community input process is to act without bias. We want to gather honest input from as many people and geographic areas as possible. Think of the community members like a pulse; you can check your pulse to make sure your heart is beating in a healthy way just like community members can determine if there are enough usable and aesthetically pleasing amenities to keep them happy and healthy.
Listening to Learn
Unlike some other aspects of comprehensive parks and recreation master plans that are more data driven, community engagement is almost entirely qualitative. When we host focus groups, stakeholder meetings, surveys, interviews, and facilitated discussions, we are listening for interests and needs; we are listening for stories about what is working and what can be improved so that we can make recommendations in favor of positive change.
Utilizing Cellphone Data
Recently, we have been using cellphone-based geographic data to understand how, when, and where people are using parks and recreation amenities. There is meta data that is tied to a cellphone and shows how long a user was at a park, where they go after, and where they were before. Overlaying user input from community meetings with cellphone data allows us to cross check and validate the findings.
Using cellphone data changes the ways in which we can understand park usage. Now, we can see how many users are traveling to the park from out of town, and we can see how far people are willing to travel for a good park. Prior to this, it was hard to pull data that showed resident versus non-resident usage, and those numbers are useful for the park owner to have. This data also shows how a well-used and well-loved park can have a positive economic impact on the surrounding area.
For instance, it might show that most users leave a specific neighborhood park and go directly to an ice cream shop that’s half a mile down the road. This is important information for a County or a municipality to have as they plan future parks and park locations.
Funding Requires Engagement
Finally, community input events increase the chances of a community receiving grant funding. Funding agencies want to see that the consultant made recommendations based on what the community actually wants, and there are specific scoring criteria that ensure funding administrations check for this. This applies to Parks and Recreation Trust Fund (PARTF), Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), and Accessible Parks Grant (AP), among others in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Revitalizing an Underused Park
After completing a parks and recreation master plan for Lincoln County and the City of Lincolnton, McGill created a master plan for the City of Lincolnton’s City Park. This park had seen better days. Based on community input, McGill designed a mixed-use park with upgraded athletic facilities, as well as complimentary passive recreation opportunities. These changes foster social opportunities for residents living near City Park and visitors who are using the park.
City Park is one of the endpoints for a 1.6-mile rail trail that connects to Betty G. Ross Park and the Lentz Recreation Center Gymnasium and Pool. To justify funding for the park, we highlighted an existing demand for recreation. The community input showed that the City needed more space for recreation, and these updates will positively shape the area’s downtown. We noted that, at times, the fire marshal had to visit the park to ensure the City was not exceeding its safe capacity. Community input led to a successful grant application and revitalization of the park, which is currently in the design phase.
Does Your Park Need Revitalization?
Do you have a park that needs improvements? If you do, reach out to Mike Norris, Land Planning and Recreation Practice Area Leader, to learn more about our land planning team and projects. You can email Mike at mike.norris@mcgillassociates.com.
