21 minute read
The New Parks Movement: Resilient Park Access
The Tacoma (Washington) park and recreation department was a grantee of
NRPA’s 10 Minute Walk grant program, in partnership with The Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute, to ensure that everyone has close-to-home access to a highquality park and recreation space.
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How communities It was an overcast Pacific Northwest day are using parks and in December 2019 when Metro Parks recreation to foster health and resiliency Tacoma (Washington) Management Fellow Jackson Skinner led a group of about 35 park and recreation professionals and planners around Tacoma’s park sys-
By Jared Mummert tem. From the picturesque waterfront at Point Defiance Park — complete with a zoo, aquarium, miles of trails and views of the Puget Sound as well as, on a clear day, the breathtaking 14,410-foot Mount Rainier and Cascade Mountains — to the recently constructed and meaningful Eastside Community Center, park and recreation professionals witnessed the beauty, complexity and diversity of the Metro Parks Tacoma system.
The Tacoma park and recreation department, along with the visiting park and recreation professionals, were grantees of NRPA’s 10 Minute Walk grant program, in partnership with The Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute, to ensure that everyone has close-to-home access to a high-quality park and recreation space. Over three years, 32 communities across the United States — from sunny Miami, Florida, to snowy Anchorage, Alaska, and from Winooski, Vermont, with a population of 7,000, to Los Angeles County, with a population of more than 10 million — received $40,000 for a park-planning grant to create equitable park systems.
Reimagining the Basics
Park and recreation professionals have taken the basics of park planning — master planning, land acquisition, geographic information system (GIS) mapping and more — and adapted them to meet the moment. Some communities, like Camden, New Jersey, had a high percentage of community members living within a 10-minute walk of a park, but many of those spaces were not high quality. Others, like Chattanooga, Tennessee, had a low percentage of access to parks within a 10-minute walk, but the spaces they had were of a higher quality. To address these nuances, each community took an approach that was best for them. El Cajon, California, created El Cajon 2030, the city’s first-ever park master plan, to bring parks and open spaces to a community that is fully built out. In Lewisville, Texas, the park and recreation agency worked to establish a land dedication ordinance for development that more equitably funds park development in a rapidly growing city. Raleigh, North Carolina, used GIS data and community input to develop a park quality assessment tool to determine priorities for its master plan update.
Equity and community engagement were central to grantees’ park access work. In Anchorage, park and recreation professionals centered immigrant, refugee and Indigenous voices in their engagement process to learn how they could increase access and create culturally relevant and welcoming spaces (tinyurl.com/t4e8j22h). The project team held listening sessions at the Alaska Native Heritage Center to hear the concerns of new Alaskans and Alaska Natives. Through these sessions, the project team learned of barriers, such as the need for seasonappropriate gear and fears of wildlife encounters. Participants expressed the desire for culturally relevant art, more signage, edible and native landscaping, and culturally relevant markets. Further south in arid Southern California, park and recreation professionals in Norwalk, California, went into their master plan process with a vision and expectations of the project. As the team engaged the community, they
Equity and community engagement were central to grantees’ park access work.
learned of deep-rooted barriers to access that were not only physical barriers, but also were grounded in a mistrust of government. This development led the agency to cultivate new partnerships with community-based organizations to build trust and deliver on promises for the community.
In 2018, Denver completed its Neighborhood Equity Index and found that the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods — which have high numbers of people of color and high-poverty rates — lack access to high-quality parks or, in some cases, any park. To address this injustice, Denver voters passed a 0.25 percent sales tax that provides a dedicated funding stream for park and recreation professionals to improve park quality and acquire land for new parks in park-poor areas. Through this grant, Denver’s park and recreation professionals held public meetings, hired additional staff dedicated to managing parkland acquisition and built out a framework to develop their land acquisition plan. In June 2021, the city completed Denver Parks and Recreation’s Strategic Acquisition Plan to close its 10-minute walk gap. Access to high-quality parks and recreation improves mental and physical health, environmental resilience, safety and social cohesion. Ensuring everyone has access to parks and recreation is part of the answer to addressing the harm and disinvestment done to Black, Indigenous and Latino communities.
Access to Parks and Recreation Is Restorative Justice
In Tacoma, the Eastside Community Center represents why access to parks and recreation is a form of justice. The East Side community of Tacoma had long faced disinvestment. The neighborhood was redlined (tinyurl.com/37tutf33) in the 1930s by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation because it was a low-income, immigrant community. In the following decades, the neighborhood would see a school, pool and library built and later closed. The community lacked safe gathering spaces. It took a tragic event and a motivated, tenacious mother to change that.
As park and recreation professionals toured the community center in 2019, they heard the powerful story of the impetus for the community center from Shalisa Hayes, mother of Billy Ray Shirley III. In 2011, Shirley, who was 17 years old, went to a party to give someone a ride home when a fight broke out. He and a friend collected another friend and were leaving when someone came up from behind and shot Shirley in the back, killing him. According to Hayes, Shirley often would talk about the need for a safe space for kids on the East Side. At her son’s funeral, Hayes announced that she would pursue getting a community center built in their neighborhood. Friends, family and neighbors joined the effort and convinced their elected officials to make Shirley’s dream a reality.
It was a difficult and tumultuous effort. Hayes and community members advocated for years and spent countless hours debating what the space would include, balancing their desired amenities, like a pool, with what they thought would be realistic and affordable. The determination and courage of a mother shone through when Hayes, in need of additional funding, went to a summit in Tacoma that Governor Jay Inslee was attending and found her moment when he and his staff were getting on an elevator. She gave the governor her elevator pitch and got $2.5 million in his next budget. In 2018, the 55,000-square-foot, $32 million community center opened,
Some communities, like Camden, New Jersey, had a high percentage of community members living within a 10-minute walk of a park, but many of those spaces were not high quality.
complete with a climbing wall, zipline, gym, music recording studio, kitchen, café, classrooms and a 318,000-gallon swimming pool — a reflection of the vision of the community.
In hearing this story (tinyurl. com/36a87397), one is inspired yet disheartened. It should not have taken the loss of an innocent, young life to galvanize the resources for a community gathering space, but it did. Shirley’s story — Hayes’ story — is powerful and was made possible by a visionary son and a passionate and determined mother, but the story of disinvestment in lowincome communities of color; the story of senseless gun violence; the story of a lack of access to safe, culturally-relevant, welcoming park and recreation spaces is not unique to Tacoma. These stories can be told of communities across the United States.
A New Phase in the Parks Movement
Over the past 150 years, parks and recreation has responded to the needs of communities (tinyurl. com/3zdeej9y) — from the Olmsted parks, built to combat pollution and disease in cities, to parks functioning as service centers for immigrants, to the many roles of parks and recreation centers today. Park and recreation professionals provide meal sites during the summer and after school. They offer places for older adult and youth physical activity programs. They provide spaces for learning, connection to nature and environmental resilience; spaces for healing and memorials; spaces for joy and celebration.
Parks and recreation is essential to the fabric of every community. Lacking access to parks and recreation is an injustice. To achieve just and fair park access for all people, agencies must acknowledge, harness and celebrate the unique power and resilience that dwell within communities while working to remove the barriers that perpetuate the inequities that exist between them.
In July 2021, NRPA announced the selection of a new cohort of grantees for the Resilient Park Access grant, taking the work of the 10 Minute Walk to the next level. These six communities are receiving more than $2.5 million total to take a community-driven, equityfocused, systems-level approach to addressing systemic racism and inequities in park access, environmental resilience and community health. Grantees are using a myriad of strategies, such as promoting community engagement, supporting workforce development, creating culturally relevant spaces for healing, and enshrining community power in plans and policies, to shift power structures in their systems and institutions from a traditional top-down approach to a grassroots, community-driven approach. “We are thrilled to be working in partnership with these park and recreation professional leaders to advance communitycentered local solutions,” says Rachel Banner, director of park access at NRPA. “While this work will take intentionality and time, we are excited to be able to lift up their journey along the way so that park and recreation professionals can work together to create stronger, healthier and more resilient communities through parks.”
This moment in our history requires us to live up to the highest ideals of our profession in creating a multiracial, multicultural democratic society that supports community power in creating equitable park access and quality for all. Communities across the United States are picking up this gauntlet. How are you and your agency answering the call?
Jared Mummert is Park Access Program Manager at NRPA (jmummert@nrpa.org).
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ADA Construction: Best Practices and Lessons Learned
By Gary Logue
Having worked as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) coordinator for the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA) for the past 19 years, I can attest that one of our biggest challenges in both the indoor and outdoor environments has been the ability to ensure 100 percent compliance with ADA standards. With more than 400 facilities, 24,000 acres of parkland and 1,145,670 customers at last count, here’s what I have found to be best practices.
Standards vs. Guidelines
There’s always that project manager who thinks, for example, “We don’t have to follow the trail accessibility guidelines because they are not required.” While there’s an inkling of truth to that statement, remember all guidelines eventually become standards after adoption. Not only does this mindset save you money in the long run versus having to come back and retrofit for compliance down the road, but also by following the guidelines you are meeting the spirit of the law by ensuring persons with disabilities can participate in your programs and services. In addition, why risk the negative publicity? Use the latest guidelines to level the playing field, which is your ultimate goal!
Planning
Identifying all of the applicable ADA standards and guidelines in a renovation or new construction is paramount to getting it right the first time. Dedicate a page or two of your plans to those ADA components and detail those standards to help ensure your contractor and project manager are clear on those expectations.
When making renovations, at a minimum and unless all your ADA obligations are satisfied, you should spend 20 percent of your project budget on accessibility needs. Starting outside in, think logically and prioritize: • Is the accessible parking compliant? • Is the route to the facility accessible? • Is the restroom inside compliant? • Are there both a high and low water fountain? • Would we be better served by an automatic door opener in the lobby or one for accessing the restroom?
Quality Assurance
Both during construction and after, someone should be checking the work for quality assurance. Below are some suggestions for producing a successful project outcome. • Checklists are excellent tools for guidance and documentation and can be found at the New
England ADA Center website (tinyurl.com/53t5xn38). • For accessible routes, it is critical to communicate with your contractor to ensure your base coat (prior to your concrete/ asphalt finish) will meet expectations for a slope with an absolute maximum base grade of 4.5
percent and cross slope of 1.5 percent. The standard for assessing accessible routes is to break the route into four-foot sections (if using a four-foot level), then cut the route in half lengthwise and measure each section into a consistent number of rectangular sections, determining both slope and cross slope. Total your readings and then figure the average by dividing the number of readings documented. • For accessible parking, ensuring a 2 percent slope in all directions is critical for achieving usability. If your parking space is in a gravel parking lot, ensure there is periodic maintenance performed to sweep the gravel off the space. The standard for measuring accessible parking spaces is to break the space into nine squares, again measuring both slope and cross slope for each. To determine compliance, total your slope readings and then divide by 9 to get your overall slope score. • Ensure your maintenance staff are checking the opening force of your interior doors monthly. Five pounds of pressure or less is critical for ensuring seamless usability. • Use your resources! The Mid-
Atlantic ADA Information Center has been an invaluable resource over the years (adainfo.org).
The experience here at FCPA has been overwhelmingly positive thanks to staff support and a healthy allocation of resources. While 100 percent compliance is still a ways down the road, we have built a solid foundation for the future.
Gary Logue is ADA Coordinator for Fairfax County Park Authority (gary.logue@fairfaxcounty.gov).
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Whatever Floats Your Pumpkin Boat!
• Seven-time Regatta Champion Robert Cook sits in his prepared pumpkin before the 2019 Giant Pumpkin Regatta.
Have you ever seen pumpkins used as canoes? Each October at the Elk Grove (California) Giant Pumpkin Festival, gourds weighing at least 500 pounds are hollowed and carved into boats for the Giant Pumpkin Regatta.
For 27 years, the Cosumnes Community Services District has held the Elk Grove Giant Pumpkin Festival during the first weekend in October. The park and recreation department first created the harvest celebration around an international giant pumpkin contest. The festival grew larger each year, and so did the pumpkins! The most recent festivals have attracted more than 70,000 visitors and numerous one-ton pumpkins. The heaviest pumpkin weighed a whopping 2,138 pounds!
Back in 2006, festival organizers were looking for ways to bring more pumpkin attractions to the growing event. They learned of a pumpkin regatta held in Nova Scotia, Canada, and decided to recreate the event in Elk Grove since the festival takes place around a small lake.
While the three heftiest pumpkins from Saturday’s Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off remain on display throughout the weekend, the other giant gourds (weighing between 500 to 1,000 pounds) may be entered into the regatta on Sunday. A few loyal contestants even grow pumpkins specifically for the regatta.
Every minute counts as the junior shipwrights craft their vessels, just hours before the event. Pumpkins are buoyant, but it’s impossible to guess which part of the pumpkin will float above the water. So, with the help of a forklift, skippers place their gourd in the water, mark the water line with a permanent marker and then remove the pumpkin from the water and begin preparing it with reciprocating saws, hand saws and shovels. They’ll climb into the carved pumpkin while it is on land to make sure there’s enough room for their legs and torso.
And they’re off! Competitors must paddle across the lake — about the length of a football field — pick up a flag at the dock, and paddle back. The most important rule is they must start and end the race inside their pumpkin — it is more of a balancing act than a speed race.
The giant pumpkin shells are surprisingly seaworthy but difficult to steer. Some pumpkins veer off course and end up soaking their skipper in the lake’s fountain. Some pumpkins tip over and force their skipper to swim back with the boat in tow. There are no guarantees when you’re relying on a gigantic fruit to transport you across a lake — but it is always entertaining.
Thousands of onlookers gather around the shores of the lake to cheer on the contestants. Will they sink or swim? Everyone is eager to see who will paddle in for bragging rights, cash prizes and the title of Pumpkin Regatta Champion. This 14-year tradition in Elk Grove is a must-see!
Learn more at yourcsd.com/GPF and become a friend of the festival on social media at @ElkGroveGPF. – Jenna Brinkman, Public Affairs Manager, Cosumnes Community Services District
PARKS & RECREATION OCTOBER 2021 ◆ WELCOME TO PLAY! ◆ WALKING THE AUTISM NATURE TRAIL ◆ THE NEW PARKS MOVEMENT
