Parks & Recreation July 2020

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contentsjuly 2020

Robin Pfenning, Growing Tree Preschool teacher at Gurnee Park District, works with a preschooler.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEANNA JOHANN

volume 55 | number 7 | parksandrecreation.org

FEATURES

34 Celebrating YOU This July Cort Jones

This Park and Recreation Month, we will begin to redefine the field of parks and recreation as an essential, vital necessity by sharing how the people at the heart of these parks and recreation facilities are frontline staff, confronting our most pressing health, environmental and social challenges.

42 Parks and Recreation in a Post-Pandemic World Neelay Bhatt

As we enter a very different Park and Recreation Month compared to past years, two things are abundantly clear: (1) park and recreation professionals have never been more essential; and (2) pre-pandemic ways of doing things must change. Welcome to the era of adaptability, agility and innovation.

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48 Spokane’s Riverfront Pavilion Elizabeth J. Zipf, LEED AP BD+C

In 1974, Spokane, Washington, hosted a world’s fair where the U.S. pavilion served as a symbol of Mother Nature and of hope for a better, cleaner world. Today, the newly renovated pavilion at Riverfront Spokane symbolizes the city itself and its unwavering determination to bring its natural beauty back to its people.

Oh, the endless days!

Gathered together Reveling in the joy of play.

Where watery wonders excite us Unite us And invite us to set our imaginations free.

To learn more and inspire your outdoors, visit aquatix.playlsi.com.

Š2020 Landscape Structures Inc. All rights reserved.

columns

contents july

8

Perspectives We Are Parks and Recreation Kristine Stratton

departments

10 Editor’s Letter Celebrating Our Park and Recreation Professionals Gina Mullins-Cohen

12 We Are Parks & Recreation Tennis, Anyone? 12 Feeding Glenview 13 Remembering Barry S. Tindall 14 Renowned Public Health Expert Chris Kochtitzky Passes Away 15 Member Benefit: The ADA and COVID-19 15

18 Finance for the Field Implications of the Rise and Decline of Golf John L. Crompton, Ph.D.

20 Advocacy Advocacy Is the Path Forward for Parks and Recreation Elvis Cordova

16 Research Data Reveals Elevated Need for Parks and Recreation Kevin Roth

22 Conservation The Fight Against Tick-Borne Disease Danielle Chatelain, MPH

17 Park Pulse Park and Recreation Sponsored Summertime Activities Are Vital to Communities Everywhere

24 Health and Wellness Mobile Recreation for Fun, Health and Wellness Clement Lau, AICP, DPPD

52 Operations The Build Goes On! 52 Paula M. Jacoby-Garrett Parks Build Community 2019: Baltimore Project Evaluation 54 Kevin Brady, J. Aaron Hipp and William Beam Swim School 2020: The ReCreation of RECreation 57 Jende K. Smith, CPRP, AFO

26 Social Equity Nature Must Be Accessible to All Priya Cook

28 Law Review

58 Park Essentials

NEPA Process for Deer Management at National Seashore James C. Kozlowski, J.D., Ph.D.

63 Advertiser Index The MAP of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla Paula M. Jacoby-Garrett

J U LY 2020 N R PA .O RG

Cover image: Illustration by Kim Mabon

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PHOTO COURTESY OF CITY KIDS WILDERNESS PROJECT

City Kids Wilderness Project creates space for black children to thrive through relationships with each other and the outdoors.

64 Park Bench

Page 26

Doug Kane, Whitefish Bay Recreation

John DeKemper, Cornelius Parks, Arts, Recreation and Culture (PARC)

Aaron Watson, Mercer County Park Commission

To learn how we’re celebrating YOU this July for Park and Recreation Month, visit nrpa.org/July Robin Pfenning, Gurnee Park District

#WeAreParksAndRec

P E R S P E C T I V E S A M E S S A G E F R O M N R P A’ S L E A D E R S

We Are Parks and Recreation This is the Parks & Recreation magazine issue that I have been waiting for because it celebrates Park and Recreation Month.

This year, we are doing something a little bit different. In addition to promoting the many ways patrons enjoy local parks and recreation, as is our custom, we are using this month to kick off an ongoing push to elevate the field of parks and recreation.

We do this by honoring the professionals who work in communities big and small, in good times and in times of crisis. We do this by celebrating you.

Every day, in communities across the country, the people of parks and recreation make their communities better places to live, work and play. Because of their essential work, NRPA wants to shift the narrative of parks and recreation, redefining it as an essential, vital necessity.

In designing this campaign, we recognize that the people making these important contributions to our communities must be front and center. Each one of their diverse, lived experiences contributes to the widereaching impact of our field as a whole.

Take Debbie Davidson, aquatics director for Arkansas City (Kansas) Recreation Commission, as an example.

Her title doesn’t begin to capture everything she does for the community, and her small town’s community center may not have a health clinic, but they are a health and wellness hub, nonetheless. From providing out-of-school time programs and nutrition; a weekly farmers market; adult and youth sports leagues; older adult programs; Red Cross water safety trainings; and community events — it’s easy to see why Davidson is a town treasure and represents how park and recreation professionals transform lives.

Moving from a town of less than 12,000 to a city of more than 700,000, we find Allegra “Happy” Haynes, executive director of parks and recreation for the city of Denver, Colorado. Demonstrating a lifelong career of civic involvement and serving as deputy mayor, it’s no surprise that she stepped forward to give compelling testimony during a U.S. House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands hearing earlier this year, in support of the Outdoors for All Act (tinyurl.com/yd9y9l92). “Historic disinvestment has left many low-income communities and 8

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communities of color without access to quality parks and recreation opportunities,” Haynes said during her testimony. Referring to Denver, she added, “We are on a mission to make sure that your race, income and zip code don’t affect your access to nature.” Park and recreation leaders like Haynes are both pushing for the programs and investments their local communities need and advocating for these critical resources across the country to support public health, climate-ready cities and economic growth.

Another terrific example reflects the pursuit of excellence. John Prue, the installation program director, Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) Department at the Naval Station-Great Lakes, leads a comprehensive program for more than 25,000 Navy personnel, family members, retirees and other patrons. Prue has been dogged in his pursuit of the highest standards in program management and accreditation. In 2012, his MWR team was the first-ever military installation to win the coveted National Gold Medal Award presented by the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration. Prue’s team also currently holds the Commander Navy Installations Command 5 Star Accreditation, which exemplifies the highest standards of MWR programming, professionalism, financial performance and superior customer service.

We began planning for this campaign with a list of adjectives encapsulating the true spirit of park and recreation professionals, because we want the world to know what we already knew about the people of parks and recreation.

We are strong.

We are confident.

We are selfless.

We are passionate.

We are driven.

We are essential.

KRISTINE STR AT TON President and CEO

2377 Belmont Ridge Rd. | Ashburn, VA 20148 2 703.858.0784 | nrpa.org

NRPA’S MISSION: To advance parks, recreation and environmental conservation efforts that enhance the quality of life for all people.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Chair of the Board of Directors Jack Kardys J. Kardys Strategies Miami, Florida

Joanna Lombard University of Miami School of Architecture; Miller School of Medicine Department of Public Health Sciences Miami, Florida

Chair-Elect Michael P. Kelly Chicago Park District Chicago, Illinois Treasurer Jesús Aguirre, CPRE

Carolyn McKnight-Fredd, CPRP

Seattle Parks and Recreation Seattle, Washington

Herman Parker

Previously with BREC Dallas, Texas

Joshua Medeiros, Ed.D., CPRP, AFO City of Bristol Parks & Recreation Bristol, Connecticut

Secretary Carolyn McKnight-Fredd, CPRP

Formerly of City of San Diego, California, Parks and Recreation Department San Diego, California

Previously with BREC Dallas, Texas

Ian Proud

President and CEO Kristine Stratton, Ex Officio National Recreation and Park Association Ashburn, Virginia

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Michael Abbaté, FASLA, LEED AP Abbaté Designs Portland, Oregon

Jesús Aguirre, CPRE Seattle Parks and Recreation Seattle, Washington

Hayden Brooks American Realty Corporation Austin, Texas

Kong Chang City of Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Saint Paul, Minnesota

Kevin Coyle, J.D.

Playworld Systems Williamsport, Pennsylvania

Nonet T. Sykes Atlanta Beltline, Inc. Atlanta, Georgia

Xavier D. Urrutia Alamo Colleges District San Antonio, Texas

Greg A. Weitzel, M.S., CPRP City of Las Vegas Parks and Recreation Las Vegas, Nevada

Philip Wu, M.D. Formerly of Kaiser Permanente Northwest Region Portland, Oregon

LIFE TRUSTEES Beverly D. Chrisman Lexington, South Carolina

National Wildlife Federation Reston, Virginia

Anne S. Close

Jose Felix Diaz

James H. Evans

Ballard Partners Miami, Florida

New York, New York

Victor Dover

Sugar Hill, New Hampshire

Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning Miami, Florida

Earl T. Groves

Richard Gulley

Charles E. Hartsoe, Ph.D.

City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department San Diego, California

Jack Kardys J. Kardys Strategies Miami, Florida

Fort Mill, South Carolina

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EDITOR’S LET TER

Celebrating Our Park and Recreation Professionals Right now, the people of our country are facing many complicated and deep-seated challenges — from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to a number of recent instances of police brutality enacted upon the black community that have brought to a head a long history of systemic racism.

Amidst the worry and unrest, park and recreation professionals have stood out as a beacon of hope for the progress that can be made to overcome these issues. What we have known all along has become exceedingly apparent — park and recreation leaders are the glue holding communities together, and the essential services you provide bring about the promising change our nation needs.

That’s why, for this year’s Park and Recreation Month, our theme is focused on calling muchdeserved awareness to the people of a profession proven to be critical in addressing many of the world’s social, health and environmental challenges. Our cover story beginning on page 34, “Celebrating YOU This July,” by NRPA’s Cort Jones, highlights some of the park and recreation professionals from across the country who have committed their careers — and in many cases, their lives — to serving their communities and improving quality of life in myriad ways, from providing healthy meals and recreation opportunities to ensuring safety and inclusivity in our public spaces.

As we continue to face these challenges head on, we recognize the need to look forward and address the ways in which the world is being shaped by current events. In the feature, “Parks and Recreation in a Post-Pandemic World,” on page 42, NRPA Board member Neelay Bhatt tells how park and recreation leaders can take part in shaping the “Top 10 Next Practices,” as well as recommendations on ways your organization can become a “next practice organization.”

A recent renovation project, in Spokane, Washington, pays homage to the history of Riverfront Spokane’s pavilion while incorporating the natural landscape to create a place of community for residents of the city. In this feature story, on page 48, titled “Spokane’s Riverfront Pavilion,” contributor Elizabeth J. Zipf describes how “for many, the [1974] pavilion was a celebration of Mother Nature and…a symbol of hope for a better, cleaner world. Now, it symbolizes the city itself and Spokane’s unwavering determination to bring its natural beauty back to its people.”

This Park and Recreation Month, we sincerely thank our park and recreation professionals and are committed to bringing recognition to everything that you do to improve the quality of life for all people and to make our communities better places to live.

GINA MULLINS-COHEN Vice President of Communications and Chief Marketing Officer

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PRESIDENT AND CEO Kristine Stratton VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS AND CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Gina Mullins-Cohen gcohen@nrpa.org EXECUTIVE EDITOR, PRINT AND ONLINE CONTENT Vitisia Paynich vpaynich@nrpa.org ASSOCIATE EDITOR Lindsay Hogeboom lcollins@nrpa.org WEB EDITOR Jennifer Fulcher-Nguyen jnguyen@nrpa.org PUBLICATION DESIGN Kim Mabon/Creative By Design CreativeByDesign.net SENIOR CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Kip Ongstad 703.858.2174 kongstad@nrpa.org SENIOR CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Michelle Dellner 949.248.1057 mdellner@nrpa.org DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR Meghan Fredriksen 703.858.2190 mfredriksen@nrpa.org PHOTOGRAPHY Dreamstime.com or NRPA (unless otherwise noted) MAGAZINE ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS Anthony-Paul Diaz, Chair Michael Abbaté, FASLA Neelay Bhatt Ryan Eaker Beau Fieldsend Kathleen Gibi Paul Gilbert, CPRP Tim Herd, CPRE Brian Johnson, CPSI Denise Johnson-Caldwell Roslyn Johnson, CPRP Michele Lemons Sam Mendelsohn Maria Nardi Lisa Paradis, CPRP Paula Sliefert Shonnda Smith, CPRP, AFO Anne-Marie Spencer Stephen Springs

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Parks & Recreation 6/5/20 11:37 AM11

WE ARE PARKS & RECREATION Tennis, Anyone?

The U.S. Tennis Association offers guidelines for safely reopening tennis facilities

By Victoria Chiesa

A

s individual states and local communities begin to reopen on the heels of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the U.S. populace will be particularly eager to return to some form of physical activity and social engagement. They will want to be active, and to, once again, spend time with friends and family. Tennis is one sport that is particularly well-positioned to satisfy those desires, as it requires no direct physical contact and, when played within specific guidelines, can be played both safely and enjoyably. For those reasons, tennis is primed to serve a central role in the recovery of communities across the United States.

Indeed, tennis figures as the ultimate return sport. The U.S. Tennis Association has outlined specific guidelines for both players and facilities that, when followed correctly and in conjunction with local, regional and federal regulations from government and health agencies, will create a safe and fun experience for all.

Keeping the Sports Community Safe Because tennis is played in a variety of venues across the United States, from local parks courts to private facilities, it is imperative that teaching professionals, coaches, facility administrators, and park and recreation managers all commit to playing an important role in Tennis serves as the ultimate return sport.

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keeping the sports community safe at all levels. Though staffing capabilities may vary, those involved should, nonetheless, be both proactive and diligent in providing a clean environment, adhering to sanitary practices, planning activities, storing and distributing equipment, and communicating their plan of action to staff and patrons.

At the start, programming should be limited to activities, such as casual court rental, one-on-one coaching, small groups and private lessons. Staff must wear masks or “like in kind” and gloves when checking in players and should wash their hands and gloves often and after touching items. Teaching professionals for structured programming should be assigned to specific courts and, if possible, specific days and times. When booking courts for play, staff should stagger sessions to create a buffer that will allow for the proper disinfecting of courts and other areas. It is encouraged that every other court be used, where possible, to further promote physical distancing. Capturing accurate, complete information upon reservation is a must — in the event that proper health authorities need to trace

who has been on-site.

At all facilities, all surfaces — such as counters, tabletops, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures and toilets — should be cleaned several times a day while wearing disposable gloves. The use of indoor spaces, such as locker rooms and shower areas, should be avoided, and these should be kept closed whenever possible. Court gates should be left open, while stair rails should be wrapped with caution tape to discourage touching, or else should be wiped down every hour.

On court, scoreboards and similar devices should be removed from nets, and disinfectant soap, hand sanitizers or wipes should be available for participants. Players should be discouraged from handling balls and other equipment during lessons — instead, the coach or instructor should handle these items and work closely with staff to ensure proper disinfection.

Using new balls regularly is highly encouraged, as is restricting balls to a particular group, court or day of the week and labeling them with a permanent marker. Although there is no specific evidence that tennis balls can spread COVID-19, contamination by respiratory droplets from an infected person can potentially survive on hard surfaces for up to three days.

By taking precautions to help keep all participants safe, you’re ensuring that tennis not only will return to courts all across the country, but will again thrive there.

Victoria Chiesa is Content Producer and Editor for U.S. Tennis Association (victoria.chiesa@usta.com).

Feeding Glenview Park and recreation leaders provide essential services during COVID-19 pandemic

W

hen the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Glenview Park District in Illinois was forced to close its facilities and halt inperson programming as physical distancing and stay-athome orders were implemented to protect the health and safety of residents. Despite these obstacles, park and recreation professionals in the district remain committed to providing essential needs to the community. Staff that manage one of the district’s assets, Historic Wagner Farm, are keeping that promise by expanding agricultural education to include food production to address food insecurity in Glenview.

An active dairy farm dating back to the 1840s, Wagner Farm was acquired by the park district in 2000.

According to Jonathan Kuester, the farm’s director, its mission for the past two decades has been teaching agriculture. “The farm is set up as a 1920s living history farm, so we did a lot of 1920s activities,” he says, “but we also did a lot of modern agriculture education as a subcomponent of that.”

However, those activities were disrupted by the outbreak. The crisis compelled the Glenview community to create a local taskforce to monitor the coronavirus situation and share updates from the local hospital system, food pantry and other local government agencies. Jena Johnson, director of brand strategies and community engagement for the park district, says, “When we started experiencing the shutdown…the food pantry continued to report increasing numbers of first-time families visiting the food pantry. So, we did hear and see that there was an increasing need in our community for food. And, at the same time, we had closed our facility, but that doesn’t mean chickens stop laying eggs. At a farm, things just keep moving.”

The farm’s 80 pasture-raised hens continued to produce eggs — more than 1,000 — and fruits and vegetables continued to grow. Because of the livestock and land that was being actively farmed, “it was decided at the beginning that we were going to maintain those assets,” says Kuester. “We were directed to keep growing and keep the livestock healthy and doing what they do. Beyond that, we really weren’t given a lot of direction. We were focused on closing everything down and trying to make everything safe.”

Kuester took on this initial challenge while his staff of more than 50 employees was reduced to only three members due to the economic impact of the pandemic. Yet, even with a highly reduced workforce, Kuester and his employees were determined to do more than keep the farm afloat.

“My staff...decided that we could just do chores and call it ‘good,’ or we could try to do something,” he says.

So they decided to do what they knew how to do — grow food.

The pasture will now support 100 chickens, 25 Thanksgiving turkeys, 10 lambs, eight hogs and one beef steer — an expansion that allows

PHOTO COURTESY OF GLENVIEW PARK DISTRICT

By Lindsay Hogeboom

A camp director and camper weed the community garden at the farm.

for greater food offerings — and the eggs and produce harvested become a weekly donation to the local food pantry. The farm has also partnered with the Northern Suburban Special Education District on a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. According to the park district’s press release (tinyurl.com/y9rqclyx), farm staff hope to produce more than 20,000 pounds of fresh produce and 6,000 pounds of meat and eggs — enough food to feed nearly 50 households every week for the entire season.

Johnson asserts, “Our vision is to help everyone in our community appreciate nature and experience health and happiness on a daily basis, so we’ve...tried to use that [vision] as inspiration for how we do that in a new format. I think this farm transition is just one piece of that overall transition we’re making as an organization.”

Lindsay Hogeboom is Associate Editor for Parks & Recreation magazine (lcollins@nrpa.org).

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W E A R E P A R K S & R E C R E AT I O N

Remembering Barry S. Tindall

By Richard J. Dolesh

N

RPA lost one of its longest serving staff members in the history of the association on May 10, 2020, with the passing of Barry S. Tindall, NRPA’s longtime director of public policy.

PHOTO COURTESY OF AAPRA

“The park and recreation movement in America owes Barry Tindall a great debt of gratitude,” says Patrick F. Noonan, chairman emeritus of The Conservation Fund, former president of The Nature Conservancy and member of President Ronald Reagan’s influential President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors (1985– 1987). “Barry was at the forefront of ideas and thinking about what the nation needed and what could be done to ensure a legacy for conservation, parks and recreation,” says Noonan.

“I feel proud to have known him.

The park and recreation movement is largely what it is today because of his contributions and ideas.”

Tindall began work at NRPA in 1967 after receiving a degree from North Carolina State University in park and recreation administration. He served in a variety of roles as liaison to national groups and

Pugsley Medal winner Barry Tindall (center) in 2013 with (from left to right) Walt Johnson, AAPRA; Fran Mainella, former director of National Park Service; Sandra Reid, Davey Tree Expert Company; and Tom Lovell, AAPRA. 14

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nonprofits on national policy and federal legislation. He planned the first Federal Aid Institute at NRPA’s Annual Conference that led to development of NRPA’s annual Legislative Forums in Washington, D.C., which drew NRPA members from across the country to advocate for funding for parks and recreation.

Tindall was appointed director of public policy at NRPA in 1975, a position he held until his retirement in 2005. His contributions to gaining passage of critical federal legislation benefiting P&R and to the development of national public policy cannot be overstated. He fought fiercely for appropriations for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), and was instrumental in gaining legislation and funding for urban parks and recreation. He championed greater involvement of parks and recreation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture summer food programs, the inclusion of recreation services for children and youth in high-risk environments, regulations regarding therapeutic recreation and accessibility, and promoted public health in P&R. James Kozlowski, associate professor in the School of Sport, Recreation and Tourism at George Mason University in Virginia, and author of the “Law Review” column in Parks & Recreation magazine, believes that Tindall’s greatest accomplishment was his leadership on the LWCF state-

side program. “Barry led the charge for NRPA on Capitol Hill every year to secure those appropriations for LWCF, greatly benefitting local and state parks and recreation.”

Tindall’s accomplishments were recognized by the U.S. Department of Interior’s renowned award for public service in 1992, and in 2013, the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration’s prestigious award, the Cornelius Amory Pugsley medal, that “recognizes outstanding contributions to the promotion and development of public parks and conservation in the United States.”

Jane Adams, former Western regional director of NRPA and executive director of the California Recreation and Park Society, says, “As a park and recreation professional, I felt Barry Tindall was the voice of NRPA on federal legislative issues.

He was relentless in his push for LWCF for decades, and he served as the voice for local and state government’s access to those federal dollars. He was thoughtful, kind and a great listener. Barry is one of the best advocates I have ever met.”

Mike Phillips, former NRPA public policy manager, says, “Barry never met a stranger. He could talk to anyone and everyone.” Phillips says his access to administrative staff and legislative aides to members of Congress was legendary. “He was a mentor, a teacher and a friend and I will miss him greatly.”

Many at NRPA remember Barry with great fondness, and his legacy will live long. Perhaps Noonan remembers Barry best: “When I hear his name, I have a great smile.”

Richard J. Dolesh is an Editor at Large for Parks & Recreation magazine (rdolesh@nrpa.org).

Renowned Public Health Expert Chris Kochtitzky Passes Away

O

PHOTO COURTESY OF CDC

n Sunday, May 3, the public health field lost Chris Kochtitzky, a senior advisor in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity (DNPAO), where he served as an expert on the development of evidence-based guidelines and recommendations to increase physical activity across the United States In his role with DNPAO and his collaboration across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Kochtitzky supported program evaluation, strategic planning and partner/stakeholder engagement in the areas of active living and related health promotion.

He authored several publications, including a 2006 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report. Kochtitzky was also a driving force in organizing the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Conference on Health and Active Transportation. His work in this area supported TRB’s decision to create a Committee on Health and Transportation in February, a seminal moment in the field.

Kochtitzky was a tenacious public health professional who pursued his work with vigor, charm, wisdom and intelligence. His death is a major loss for his friends, his field and for the CDC’s work.

Kochtitzky started at CDC as a presidential management intern in 1992, and worked for several years as a policy analyst in the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and then served in other key roles. The CDC director at the time, Dr. Julie Gerberding, recognized his service in 2006 when she hired him as the Healthy Community Goal team leader where he served until 2009.

From 2009 to 2017, he was the associate director for program development for the NCEH Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services before joining the DNPAO as a senior advisor for the Physical Activity Branch.

Through his work, Kochtitzky was known for the strength of the partnerships he developed and maintained. His networks allowed for the spread of science and implementation of programs across federal, state and local agencies, as well as the private and nonprofit sectors.

A special thanks to Chris Kochtitzky’s colleagues and friends at CDC who collaborated on this special tribute.

Member Benefit: The ADA and COVID-19 Considerations for park and recreation professionals

By John N. McGovern, JD

W

e are in a rapidly evolving situation. A pandemic made visitors unwelcome to your facilities, programs and parks. Some professionals are in states that are just opening recreation programs this month; some are in states with programs opening in a month or more; while others are in states where a second wave of COVID-19 has reclosed parks, programs and sites.

Throughout the pandemic, several things remain constant. One is demand by people with and without disabilities for recreation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) leads the fight against the pandemic and acknowledges that discrimination on the basis of disability violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

DOJ Requirements The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) mandates agencies to serve people with disabilities. Ask yourself: • Do you welcome people with disabilities in programs? Across the board, exclusion fails.

• Do you provide support for people with disabilities? Requests for a sign language interpreter, extra staff training, better staff ratio, policy changes, using adaptive equipment and transportation should be met with a “yes.”

• Do you consider objective information about a person with a disability posing a direct threat? Mask wearers protect others from the spread of COVID-19 by respiratory droplets. Persons with or without a disability who cannot wear a mask in programs merit a discussion about direct threat. Similarly, some children with certain conditions may spit or bite other participants or staff. Zero tolerance to those behaviors may be acceptable. This must be actual or objective — saying “I think he is a threat” fails. Incident reports, current and past, are necessary to navigate COVID-19.

NRPA members receive a discount on all accessibility audits and services provided by WT Group LLC. Visit nrpa.org/MemberDiscounts.

John N. McGovern, JD, is Principal-in-Charge at WT Group LLC Accessibility Practice (john.mcgovern@rac-llc.com).

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RESEARCH Data Reveals Elevated Need for Parks and Recreation

By Kevin Roth

T

he coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has put a spotlight on the essential nature of parks and recreation. Throughout our nation, parks, trails and other open space facilities were often the remaining available recreation opportunity as the health crisis took hold. As a result, most communities saw a surge in usage at their parks.

And, it is little wonder as to why: 5 in 6 U.S. adults in May’s NRPA Park Pulse poll (nrpa.org/ParkPulse) said that exercising at their local park is essential to maintaining their mental and physical health.

Many park users over the past few months have included these amenities as part of their day-to-day life. In fact, 86 percent of people surveyed for the 2019 Engagement with Parks Report (nrpa.org/Engagement) noted that they visit their local parks and recreation facilities. But other users are new park visitors, and after this introduction (or even reintroduction) to their local parks, trails and open space, many have started a new healthy habit that will continue long after the pandemic ends.

Every person deserves access to high-quality, well-maintained parks and recreation options. Yet, this health crisis has identified those

A Park Pulse poll reveals 5 in 6 U.S. adults say that exercising at their local park is essential to their mental and physical health.

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busy park areas where we have not achieved this vital goal. But how does one identify the right amount of park and recreation amenities?

One way is to use data to make the case for greater park and recreation resources. More specifically, NRPA Park Metrics (nrpa.org/ Metrics) provides a guide to reach this goal.

NRPA Park Metrics is the most comprehensive source of data standards and insights for park and recreation agencies. Park and recreation professionals and advocates use this benchmark data to gain more funding support, improve operations and better serve their communities.

If you have not used Park Metrics recently, the first place to start is the 2020 NRPA Agency Performance Review (nrpa.org/APR).

This report, published in May and based on the data from 1,053 agencies across the United States, highlights 24 of the most critical park and recreation metrics collected from the NRPA Park Metrics database. It finds that the “typical” park and recreation agency: • Has 9.9 acres of parkland for every 1,000 residents • Has 8.1 full-time equivalents

(FTEs) on staff for every 10,000 residents • Has annual operating expenses of $81.19 on a per capita basis • Recovers 25.9 percent of its operating expenditures from non-tax revenues But no two park and recreation agencies are the same. So, the medians presented above are not the guidelines that agencies should necessarily follow. Instead, park and recreation professionals should seek benchmarks that represent their specific situation.

Park Metrics’ interactive reporting tools allow you to build a customized benchmark report based on a peer group you define. Simply go into NRPA Park Metrics to filter the data by agency type, size and geographic region. You can enhance this experience even further by entering your agency’s data into NRPA Park Metrics, after which you can generate reports that compare your agency’s data with the critical metrics of peer agencies throughout the United States.

Has your agency updated its Park Metrics profile recently? If not, the typical park and recreation professional can enter their agency’s Park Metrics data in fewer than 30 minutes.

NRPA Park Metrics and the 2020 Agency Performance Review provide park and recreation professionals and advocates the data tools they need to ensure their residents have the amenities and services they deserve. Contact Melissa May (mmay@nrpa.org) for assistance in entering your agency’s data or taking full advantage of the reporting tools.

Kevin Roth is Vice President of Research, Evaluation and Technology at NRPA (kroth@nrpa.org).

NRPA PARK PULSE

Park and Recreation Sponsored Summertime Activities Are Vital to Communities Everywhere

9access in 10 U.S. adults want children to have to community-based programs and services during the summer.

Summertime activities typically offered by local park and recreation professionals and their agencies include: Summer Childcare

Summer Camps

Sports Leagues

Summer Meal Programs

95% of parents in the United States with young children say it’s important for children in their community to have access to these seasonal opportunities.

Each month, through a poll of 1,000 U.S. residents focused on park and recreation issues, NRPA Park Pulse helps tell the park and recreation story. Questions span from the serious to the more lighthearted. The survey was conducted by Wakefield Research (www.wakefieldresearch.com).

Visit nrpa.org/ParkPulse for more information.

FINANCE FOR THE FIELD Implications of the Rise and Decline of Golf

By John L. Crompton, Ph.D.

I

n 1950, there were approximately 4,900 18-hole equivalent golf courses (18-HEQ) in the United States. Most had been commissioned by exclusive private clubs to serve the upper class, and only 3 percent had any residential real estate around them. In the post-World War II economic boom, the number of players increased from 3.5 million in 1950 to 11.2 million in 1970. During this period, the game was embraced by the new middle class who had the time, money and desire to engage in more recreational activities.

The catalyst for the symbiotic relationship between golf and real estate that sparked the boom in courses in the latter decades of the 20th century was the highly publicized Sea Pines Plantation development on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island. Charles Fraser (who was a chair of the NRPA Board of Trustees from 1974 to 1975) undertook this development

around 1960. Fraser demonstrated that golf courses could be designed so they created extensive amounts of green space and water around which building lots could be wrapped; and they could be threaded through less attractive land to enhance its value.

Fraser pioneered the concept of a residential golf community. This new focus on using golf to raise

lot prices led to a change in the configuration of courses. Figure 1 shows that early “core” courses were compact, typically around 100 acres, with approximately 10,000 feet of edge. In contrast, residential golf developments typically constructed the “single fairway” configuration or adaptations of it. The residential configuration maximized the amount of edge by creating building lots on both sides of fairways, so there is typically about 47,000 feet of edge.

In 1970, there were 7,516 18HEQ courses. At their peak in 2005, the number had almost doubled to 14,990, and a large majority of the new courses were the focus of residential golf communities.

In 1987, the McKinsey & Company consulting firm published Strategic Plan for the Growth of the Game, which projected substantial increases in the number of golfers and called for “A Course a Day” to be built to accommodate it. The plan received extensive publicity in the media, was embraced by many in the development community and reinforced the momentum to build new courses.

Why Has Golf Declined?

IMAGE COURTESY OF JOHN L. CROMPTON, PH.D.

While McKinsey continued to be optimistic in its updated 1999 report, that optimism ultimately proved to be unfounded. Since 2003, there has been a consistent annual decline in the number of

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Figure 1: Early “core” courses were compact, while residential golf developments typically constructed the “single fairway” to maximize the amount of edge. | J U LY 2 0 2 0 | P A R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

golf players. There were 6.8 million fewer golfers in 2018 compared to 2003 — a loss of 22 percent. This resulted in a net reduction of 1,243 18-HEQ courses between 2005 and 2018. The decline is a function of the high cost of playing, difficulty of courses, and the game’s incompatibility with contemporary lifestyles.

Restore Property Values of Failed Golf Courses In a typical year, approximately 200 courses fail.

When a course fails, homeowners who have paid a premium to locate adjacent to it lose a substantial portion of their equity. The challenge is exacerbated by many failing courses being built on land that is proscribed from development either by local zoning ordinances seeking to preserve open space or by deed restrictions intended to protect owners who paid a premium to live near a golf course.

Changes are contingent on winning approval from homeowners associations or local governments, involve compromise and, inevitably, are politically and socially contentious. Strategies for retaining value include converting courses to parks or aesthetically appealing open spaces and reconfiguring courses by processes, such as downsizing.

of courses with natural areas is consistent with society’s growing interest in protecting the environment.

Reconfigure Courses Reconfiguration of a failing course is likely to involve downsizing it from 18 to nine holes. The process will likely involve development of additional home sites on some of the area. This generates the money needed to reconfigure, renovate and update the course, as well as transform some of the land into a park or open space.

There is often tremendous political and emotional resistance to removing a golf course completely. A partial conversion may circumvent that resistance because it results in the improvement of the residual golf component, creates accessible public open space and provides some benefit to all the stakeholders.

John L. Crompton, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University and an elected Councilmember for the City of College Station (jcrompton@tamu.edu).

Convert Courses to Appealing Open Spaces The proportion of golfing households in a golf community has been variously reported as ranging from 10 percent to 30 percent. The appeal to the majority of residents is not golf — instead, open space, beauty/aesthetics and exclusivity are the defining attractors. For the 70 to 90 percent of residents, developers are not selling a golf course, rather they are selling a view and ambience.

If the course is converted to a park or appealing open space, the lot premiums will be akin to those of a passive park and lower than those associated with a viable manicured golf course. However, they will be higher than if no intentional redesign is undertaken, so the abandoned course is neglected and becomes a vacuum of unsightly open space. Conversion to public open space substantially reduces owners’ adverse impact on equity.

Further, there is growing acknowledgment of the damage golf courses can inflict by changing existing open space ecology; denigrating wetlands, sensitive aquifers or habitat; or contributing to runoff carrying pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and fertilizers. The replacement

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NRPA’s advocacy team is determined to lead innovative advocacy campaigns to secure much-needed support and resources for park and recreation professionals.

ADVOCACY

Advocacy Is the Path Forward for Parks and Recreation

By Elvis Cordova

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t is my pleasure to greet you as the new vice president of public policy and advocacy for NRPA. I am thrilled to have joined the organization at such a pivotal time in our history. Now more than ever, our nation recognizes the essential value parks and recreation facilities provide to the well-being of our communities.

One of NRPA’s top advocacy goals is to heighten public awareness of the vital function that parks and recreation centers fulfill in our communities. The past few months have really brought this into perspective. Our neighborhood parks, trails and open spaces are the indispensable places where individuals across the country are finding respite, rejuvenation and opportunities for physical activity and connecting with people from other social or ethnic groups. The power of local parks and recreation has become even more evident and

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this essential role will continue long after this crisis has passed.

An Essential Piece of the Formula The fundamental element of any park and recreation center is its people. Every day, P&R professionals provide essential services and maintain the essential infrastructure. They are the stewards who directly contribute to countless health, social, environmental and economic benefits in the communities they serve. They are on the frontlines of our most pressing

communal challenges, working to implement local solutions that improve livelihoods. They are a driving force for community vitality that advance equity in our neighborhoods.

During times of crisis, such as an outbreak, P&R professionals serve as trusted community leaders capable of swiftly providing or supporting rapid emergency response and relief services. They have been charged with coordinating food distribution, emergency residential shelter, childcare for essential workers and other emergency response functions. This is all in addition to their customary duties of managing, operating and maintaining parks, trails, open spaces, green infrastructure, community and senior centers, pools and the countless other tasks. Their work

provides us with a sense of familiarity that allows us relief from the pervasive stress in our lives.

Why Advocacy Is Important The resources P&R facilities rely on have been drastically decreased. This can only result in intensified pressure for our P&R professionals to deliver these essential services. Increased investment is necessary for P&R to survive the immediate impacts of COVID-19. Such funding is imperative to providing the essential services for vulnerable communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Our public policy and advocacy team is determined to lead robust and innovative advocacy campaigns to secure this muchneeded support. Increased funding levels will allow P&R professionals to better serve our communities.

Some significant federal legislative proposals are on the horizon that can provide our parks and recreation with critical and long overdue funding. Among those proposals are the Great American Outdoors Act, the Water Resources Development Act, the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program, the Resilience Revolving Loan Fund Act, the Restore Our Parks and Public Lands Act and the Transit to Trails legislation, and a potentially revived Civilian Conservation Corps. We are committed to providing elected officials and policymakers with information and perspective that can persuade them to invest in our park districts.

excited to share my ideas, learn from your experience and find ways to work together. We have a unique opportunity to significantly increase awareness, appreciation and support

for the field. I know we can achieve this if we work smart, purposefully and in a coordinated way.

Elvis Cordova is NRPA’s Vice President of Public Policy and Advocacy (ecordova@nrpa.org).

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CONSERVATION

In 2018, there were 47,743 reported cases of tick-borne disease in the United States.

The Fight Against Tick-Borne Disease How partnering with local public health agencies can help protect communities

By Danielle Chatelain, MPH

T

ick-borne diseases are increasingly threatening the health of people in the United States. In 2018 alone, state and local health departments reported 47,743 cases of tick-borne disease to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with Lyme disease accounting for approximately 70 percent of these cases. The geographic and seasonal distribution of vector populations — including mosquitoes, ticks and rodents — and the bacterial and viral diseases they can carry are influenced by several factors, such as climate, land use and human responses to disease risk. Increasing temperatures across the country can contribute to longer warm seasons and an expanding distribution of mosquitoes and ticks.

As summer arrives, more people will be heading out to enjoy the many parks, trails and other open spaces in their communities, further increasing their potential contact with ticks and other disease-carrying vectors. Local health departments (LHDs) and other local vector-control organizations play a crucial role in protecting communities from mosquito- and tick-borne illnesses year-round, but they cannot do it alone. Park and recreation professionals are encouraged to partner with their local public health and local vector-control organizations to join the fight against vector-borne disease.

The National Association of County and City Health Officials

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(NACCHO), which serves as a leader, partner and advocate for the na-

tion’s nearly 3,000 LHDs, has a vector control program that enhances the capacity of LHDs and other local vector-control organizations to detect and respond to vector-borne disease threats. ​ NACCHO supports these local programs in protecting their communities from vector-borne disease through the development and promotion of tools and resources, research, policy statements, stories from the field and more.

Shared Goals Local public health and local park and recreation agencies share a goal of improving the quality of life for their communities. They both promote access to and use of community parks, trails and other open spaces to improve health outcomes.

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Ensuring that members of the community can continue to safely enjoy these spaces is a priority for not only local park and recreation agencies, but also local public health.

Building Partnerships Establishing a partnership with a local public health department or local vector-control organization will help ensure that local park and recreation agencies are prepared to join the fight against vector-borne disease and to actively address this emerging public health threat head on. A few key activities that can help park and recreation agencies engage with their local health departments and/or other local vector-control organizations on vector-related issues include: Stakeholder Meetings – Attending a stakeholder meeting or inviting your local vector program representative to your next stakeholder meeting can provide a space to share information and opportunities for collaboration and to discuss important activities occurring throughout your community. Stakeholder meetings are also a great opportunity to get more information on tick activity and recommended prevention measures.

Joint Training – Your local health department or vector control program may periodically host training events that provide information on tick bite prevention, tick-borne diseases, pesticides or other vector-related topics. Attending a training held by your local health department or local vector program can help you stay informed about the ticks in your area and the actions that you can take to protect yourself and your community from disease.

Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) – Developing an MOU with your local vector program can lay the groundwork for a long-term partnership and ensure that tick management activities are streamlined. Ideally, MOUs should be developed in advance of when tick activity is at its peak. This document will help to define how you can collaborate with your local vector control program and avoid interagency conflict and confusion in implementing tick management activities. Such activities as routine surveillance, pesticide treatments and the sharing of resources should all be included when developing an MOU. Tick surveillance activities are especially important, as they provide jurisdictions with the information needed to assess tickborne disease risks, develop suitable prevention programs and ultimately reduce illness and death.

Partnerships between local public health and park and recreation agencies make sense. Make a call to your local public health department or other local vector-control organization and begin the conversation on eradicating vector-borne disease in your community.

Danielle Chatelain, MPH, is Program Analyst, environmental health at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (dchatelain@naccho.org).

Reconnecting with Your Community Through Tech

By Liz McConomy Human beings need connection — connection with loved ones, with colleagues and with their communities. For park and recreation agencies, identifying community segments is only the beginning when it comes to creating authentic connections that are meaningful and relevant.

But agencies have the unique opportunity to foster connection and engagement across their communities — thanks to the many tech tools at their disposal. The most effective way of connecting with our community is to take the path of least resistance. Meet your residents where they already are.

Tools like online surveys that can be sent to residents digitally offer organizations a clear insight into their current interests, challenges, and offer you the chance to find out exactly how they want you to communicate with them. You might confirm some assumptions (moms might prefer email or text), while getting some surprises (many seniors are active Facebook users and may want to get event invites there!). Technology can help you take bias out of the equation by providing you with hard facts that let you know the best ways to keep building those relationships.

Finally, don’t forget to take advantage of your website; it’s a quick tool to leverage as a channel of communication either through updates, bulletins or even live chat. Communicating, be it in-person or at virtual hangouts, emailed newsletters or “snail mailed” updates, is critical. Your organization is key to keeping your residents informed and developing a sense of community as you all build the new normal together.

Visit smartrec.com to discover how we can help you engage your community.

Liz McConomy is VP Marketing at Amilia (liz.mcconomy@amilia.com).

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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Mobile Recreation for Fun, Health and Wellness

By Clement Lau, AICP, DPPD

U

rban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris was perhaps ahead of her time when she said in a 1995 article (tinyurl.com/ ybq2y92d) that “the ever-changing urban form and social ecology of neighborhoods calls for a flexible rather than rigid park design and for spatial layouts that can be easily changed in response to future needs....

One can even think of mobile parks — spaces whose equipment and furniture can be transported to other parts of the city if the need arises.”

As a park planner, I know firsthand how expensive and timeconsuming it can be to acquire land and build new parks. It typically takes years before new parks can be provided due to financial, bureaucratic and political issues, and other constraints. Mobile recreation may sound strange at first, but it may be an appropriate strategy to

meet the urgent need for additional recreational opportunities in underserved areas.

Starting a mobile recreation program is not easy though. As demonstrated in the three examples below, this must be done thoughtfully and strategically, addressing such details as: • Securing funding for the program • Identifying and prioritizing communities that are most in need • Creating a robust offering of activities to serve a variety of age groups and needs • Purchasing supplies and equipment • Organizing a pilot project • Buying a new vehicle or repurposing an existing one • Hiring staff and recruiting volunteers

El Cajon, California

PHOTO COURTESY OF CITY OF LEWISVILLE

Located in San Diego County, the city of El Cajon is home to more than 105,000 residents. In 2018, the city created Rec Squad (tinyurl.com/ y96924t5), a mobile recreation program designed to bring outdoor recreation to local parks that do not have community centers. The program

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The Play Lewisville On Wheels initiative brings recreation opportunities to areas without park resources in Lewisville, Texas. | J U LY 2 0 2 0 | P A R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

serves as one of the strategies detailed in the El Cajon 2030: Connecting People with Parks plan (tinyurl.com/ yy8ajt5h) to address the needs of areas that are “underparked.”

Rec Squad was initially formed to address the need for more staff presence and recreational opportunities at Wells Park, which generated a high volume of public safety calls.

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, Rec Squad staff worked at Wells Park several days a week, offering free afterschool activities that ranged from sports and nature activities to arts and crafts, and board games to bubble blowing and special events. This resulted in a regular set of kids going to the park, helping to revitalize the park and create a more positive environment. A key component of the city’s program is the Rec Mobile, an orange van that was repurposed and branded specifically for Rec Squad.

El Cajon is a leader in how it creatively engages communities through its mobile recreation program. Even in the midst of a pandemic, Rec Squad has conducted innovative events, including the “Hopscotch challenge” (tinyurl.com/ydfm4lqr), “JUMP!” (tinyurl.com/ycsej4kv) and “HOOP!” (tinyurl.com/y7954mxh), which brought recreation to kids at hundreds of homes across the city.

Specifically, staff delivered goodie bags filled with items like inflatable beach balls, jump ropes and coloring books, and then used colored chalk to illustrate sidewalk circuit courses.

Also noteworthy is how the city effectively uses social media and partners with healthcare providers and sponsors to offer these fun activities to promote play and exercise.

Lewisville, Texas The city of Lewisville is located near

Dallas and has a population of about 106,000 residents. In 2019, the city launched Play Lewisville On Wheels as a means to take recreational programs and activities to areas without park resources. Developing a mobile recreation program is one of the recommendations from a team of experts who advised the city on ways to ensure park access and connectivity for residents of a study area that lacks parks and has a large number of multifamily housing complexes (tinyurl.com/yc5h57yh).

In the summer of 2019, city staff ran a pilot mobile recreation program at one of the apartment complexes in coordination with a local church that was offering free meals to youth who were off from school.

One day a week, staff provided play

equipment, such as balls, corn hole, card games and educational materials, and played with the kids, many of whom were left on their own during the day. The program turned out to be very well received, as staff members were able to become mentors and bond with kids through play.

Its success inspired the city council to approve the purchase of a van and provide part-time staff to continue the program.

In October 2019, the city hosted a pop-up park event on Southwest Parkway to conduct further outreach with the community. This involved shutting down a street segment for four hours to create a park-like atmosphere and enable residents to safely gather for some fun. More than 400 people attended

the event, where they enjoyed food, live music, games and activities hosted by the city and other partners. The incredible turnout helped to demonstrate the urgent need for a park in the area. The city is currently in the process of securing land to develop a new park. With COVID-19-related budget issues, the city is also considering realigning its resources and reassigning staff from closed recreation centers to Play Lewisville On Wheels to reach out to underserved areas.

Special thanks to Frank Carson (El Cajon), and Stacie Anaya and Erika Tang (Lewisville) for the information they provided for this article.

Clement Lau, AICP, DPPD, is a Departmental Facilities Planner with the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation (clau@parks.lacounty.gov).

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City Kids Wilderness Project creates space for black children to thrive through relationships with each other and the outdoors.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CITY KIDS WILDERNESS PROJECT

SOCIAL EQUITY

Nature Must Be Accessible to All

By Priya Cook

O

n a springtime video call, Washington, D.C.-based City Kids Wilderness Project participants heard devastating news: summer programming at their beloved Broken Arrow Ranch in Jackson, Wyoming, was canceled due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Our students processed and reflected on their grief for weeks. They would miss many elements of their six-year progression through the program: horseback riding, camp cooking, whitewater rafting, solo backpacking, summiting The Grand, and other challenging and joyful rites of passage in the beautiful western wilds.

Like those young people — in the midst of a pandemic and national racial reckoning — we all crave the healing effects of time in nature.

Breath, the unencumbered intake of renewing fresh air, has taken on distressing significance as disproportionate numbers of black individuals succumb to COVID-19 and continue to suffer from the crushing trauma of systemic violence.

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be accessible to all. As Black Lives Matter protests launched around the country, Autumn Saxton-Ross, an outdoor professional, colleague and mom-friend, shared: “Got up this morning and had a (socially distanced) playdate with my #blackmommacrew. When I woke up, I was looking for excuses not to go...but still managed to fight my way out of the house. We went to Anacostia Park. The kids rode bikes, ate snacks, ran, ate more

snacks, played with bubbles and threw sticks and rocks into the river.

I am now realizing that time was everything I didn’t know I needed.

Green space, water, my babies and black people doing what we do — biking, walking, running, working out, hanging with their kids, eating crabs...outside, in community.

Dear God, my heart needed that.”

Promote Inclusiveness, Not Racism As an Indian American woman and nature lover, I’m witness to #BlackJoy as well as the impacts of COVID-19 and continued police brutality on City Kids participants and their families. I’m part of an organization committed to creating and advocating for a brighter, more inclusive and just future for all youth. To achieve this, public lands

must serve as a venue for black life and its celebration.

Violent and discriminatory actions — de jure and de facto — of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, redlining, blockbusting, property theft, intimidation and outright massacres not only robbed black people of their own homes and spaces, but also relegated their rich and varied relationships with nature to the invisible outskirts of U.S. parks, agriculture, gardening, outdoor recreation and environmentalism. What remains in those spaces are ignorance and racial bias.

A black comic book writer and biomedical editor birdwatching in America’s most iconic urban park asks a white woman to please leash her dog, per park policy, in order to preserve fragile bird habitat. She responds by calling the police to report an “African American man threatening her life.”

A white woman strolling along a lakeshore calls the police, twice over several hours, to report a black family barbequing, saying “I’m really scared! You gotta come quick!”

Youth residents in a public health and parks focus group share that “We don’t go to that park because the white people call the cops on us.”

One way that park leaders and public land managers can support black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOCs) is through authentic partnerships with and support of local black-led community organizations, affinity groups and chapters that already prioritize the experiences of BIPOCs. The experience of a black child or adult outdoors — and all of the wisdom that comes with it — naturally defies the dominant narrative.

• @BlackAFinSTEM is a national group of black nature-lovers,

scientists and friends, combating false narratives that the natural world is a white space and uplifts black outdoorspeople. They recently hosted Black Birders Week.

• Brown Girls Climb establishes a community of climbers of color and increases the visibility of diversity in climbing.

• GirlTrek encourages community walking teams grounded in a civil rights-inspired health movement.

• International Federation of Black Bass Anglers continues a long tradition of fishing among black families and connects urban kids to fishing experiences.

• Melanin Base Camp works to increase the visibility of outdoorsy BIPOCs in the media, advertising and the stories we tell ourselves.

• National African American RV-

er’s Association seeks to ensure that members and their friends have fun RV camping experiences.

• Outdoor Afro celebrates and inspires black connections and leadership in nature.

City Kids Wilderness Project creates a space for black children and youth to be and breathe. We focus on participants’ resiliency, experiences, skills and ability to thrive through relationships with each other and the outdoors. Our young leaders show their joy and ability in nature, and enliven and restore public spaces.

Parks and public spaces must remake themselves as sanctuaries for all and become places where black people and all people can celebrate, heal and breathe.

Priya Cook is Alumni Engagement and Success Partner for City Kids Wilderness Project (priya@citykidsdc.org).

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Fire Island National Seashore in New York responds to a lawsuit regarding its deer population management strategy.

L AW R EV I EW

NEPA Process for Deer Management at National Seashore James C. Kozlowski, J.D., Ph.D.

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n the case of Friends of Animals v. Romero, 948 F.3d 579 (2nd Cir. 9/17/2019), the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had to determine whether the National Park Service (NPS) had complied with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when NPS developed and approved the White-tailed Deer Management Plan for the Fire Island National Seashore (the Seashore). NPS had adopted the Plan to deal with the adverse environmental impacts associated with an overpopulation of deer on the Seashore.

Plaintiff Friends of Animals (FOA) brought a lawsuit in federal district court against NPS and the NPS Superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore (Alex Romero), alleging NPS’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and its decision to approve the Plan violated NEPA because the agency: (1) lacked essential information, (2) failed to take a hard look at the environmental conse-

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quences of its action, (3) implemented a Seashore-wide target deer density despite a lack of evidence to support that decision, and (4) failed to consider all the reasonable alternatives.

The federal district court found NPS had complied with NEPA and granted summary judgment in favor of NPS, effectively dismissing FOA’s lawsuit. Friends of Animals appealed.

National Seashore Deer Population Fire Island is a narrow 32-mile long barrier island off the south shore of Long Island, New York.

It is home to the Seashore, which runs from the Robert Moses State Park in the west to the end of the island in the east. The Seashore was established in 1964 as part of the National Park System, for “the purpose of conserving and preserving for the use of future generations certain relatively unspoiled and undeveloped beaches, dunes, and other natural features within Suffolk County, New York, which possess high value to the Nation as examples of unspoiled areas of great natural beauty in close proximity to large

concentrations of urban population.” 16 U.S.C. § 459e(a).

Although there were very few deer on Fire Island before the Seashore was established, the deer population quickly grew as the number of people on the island increased. By the 1970s and 1980s, the deer population was “established” in private residential communities interspersed within the Seashore. Although deer densities vary throughout the Seashore, the deer remain most densely concentrated in the western portion of the Seashore, likely because of the easy availability of humangenerated food in these private residential communities.

The explosion of the deer population in the 1970s brought concerns about Lyme disease and the deer’s destruction of the Seashore’s vegetation. As a result, in the 1980s, Seashore staff, along with academic and agency scientists, began to study the deer, including their movements, interactions with residents, and impact on the Seashore’s vegetation.

Because the information gleaned from those studies demonstrated “the need for a management plan to address impacts associated with changes in white-tailed deer abundance, distribution, and behavior,” NPS initiated the NEPA planning process in October 2010. The goal of this NEPA planning process was to “develop a deer management strategy that supports protection, preservation, regeneration, and restoration of native vegetation and other natural and cultural resources at the Seashore and reduces undesirable human-deer interactions in the Fire Island communities.”

NEPA Scoping Process To prepare for the development of the EIS, NPS began a “scoping process” to determine the issues the Plan should address. Internal meetings were held to identify the “purpose, need, and objectives” of the Plan. The meetings involved members of an interdisciplinary team (IDT), which included NPS staff from various offices, NPS consultants, and staff from the U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. The IDT continued to meet throughout the NEPA process; its role was to develop the alternatives that the EIS would evaluate in further detail.

In June 2011, NPS convened a Science Advisory Team (SAT) of 14 experts to answer technical questions from the IDT. SAT was tasked with considering how the deer population was affecting natural and cultural resources and creating social issues, particularly within residential communities, a maritime forest and a historic area within the National Seashore. The SAT provided two reports to the IDT, a summary report in December 2011, and its final recommendations (the SAT Final Report) in February 2012.

The IDT then conducted a series of workshops to develop and refine the range of alternatives that the EIS would consider for dealing with the deer problem at the Seashore.

Final EIS Alternatives This NEPA process culminated in the issuance of a Final EIS in December 2015 and a Record of Decision in April 2016. The EIS considered four alternative plans to manage the deer problem at the Seashore. NEPA requires a “no action alternative” to consider the environ-

mental impacts of retaining the status quo and doing nothing. Among the four alternatives, the requisite, no action alternative, Alternative A, involved the continuation of “current management actions, policies, and monitoring efforts related to deer and their effects.” Alternative A was rejected because it did not further the Plan’s objectives as “no-action would be taken to reduce deer numbers or effect a change in conditions that are the basis for the purpose of and need for action.”

Alternatives B, C and D, the action alternatives, all contained certain common elements to manage the adverse effects of the deer population, including: enhanced public education and outreach, fencing, enhanced deer population and vegetation monitoring, and coordination with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Each action alternative also proposed a Seashore-wide target deer density of 20 to 25 deer per square mile. The EIS considered, but dismissed from further analysis, the use of site-specific target deer densities for different areas within the Seashore, rather than a Seashorewide target deer density. The methods used to achieve that target varied among the alternative approaches considered. Alternative B recommended the use of a fertility control agent, while Alternatives C and D used direct reduction methods, such as sharpshooting, capture and euthanasia, as well as public deer hunting.

Ultimately, NPS chose a modified version of Alternative D, which “reduces deer density quickly, providing immediate relief from the adverse impacts of deer brows-

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ing” while providing “flexibility in management methods to address future control of deer density in different ways.”

See: tinyurl.com/y854nh8v.

Judicial Review of NEPA Process The FOA lawsuit alleged NPS did not comply with NEPA and sought an order from the federal district court invalidating the EIS and vacating the Record of Decision approving the Plan. In the opinion of the federal district court: “NPS considered a reasonable range of alternatives and that the administrative record supported its decision to select Alternative D and implement a Seashore-wide target deer density level because it furthered the EIS’s stated objectives.” Accordingly, the federal district court granted the NPS motion for summary judgment effectively dismissing FOA’s lawsuit. FOA appealed.

As cited by the federal appeals court, NEPA “establishes a national policy to encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment, and was intended to reduce or eliminate environmental damage and to promote the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the United States.” To further that policy, the court noted that NEPA requires a federal agency to prepare an EIS before taking any major action that will “significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” 42 U.S.C. § 4332(c).

As described by the court, the EIS serves to “provide a full and fair discussion of significant environmental impacts and to inform decision makers and the public of the reasonable alternatives which 30 Parks & Recreation

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would avoid or minimize adverse impacts or enhance the quality of the human environment.” The court, however, recognized that NEPA is “a procedural statute that mandates a process rather than a particular result.” Accordingly, the court acknowledged that an agency is “not constrained by NEPA from deciding that other values outweigh the environmental costs,” as long as the agency “adequately identifies and evaluates the adverse environmental effects of its action.”

As noted by the federal appeals court, judicial review of the NEPA process is governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Under the APA, federal courts will be deferential in reviewing agency decision making as long as the action taken is not “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). In particular, the federal appeals court acknowledged the scope of APA judicial review under NEPA is “narrow”: “The only role for a court is to insure that the agency has taken a ‘hard look’ at the environmental consequences; it cannot interject itself within the area of discretion of the executive as to the choice of the action to be taken.”

Applying the limited role of judiciary review under the APA, the federal court would, therefore, not question whether the court “would have reached the decision under review had we been decision makers within the agency.” On the contrary, the federal appeals court would simply determine “whether the agency has presented a rational basis for the decision reached.” If so, the federal appeals court would then uphold the agency’s decision.

Lack of Essential Information As cited by the federal appeals court, NEPA’s implementing regulations provide that the EIS must include any information “relevant to reasonably foreseeable significant adverse impacts” that “is essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives.” 40 C.F.R. § 1502.22(a). That being said, the court acknowledged that an agency is “excused from obtaining the information if the cost of doing so is exorbitant or if the means to obtain it are unknown.”

Under such circumstances, however, the court noted: the EIS must state, “that such information is incomplete or unavailable.” Further, the court found the EIS “must provide other information to help analyze the reasonably foreseeable significant adverse impacts on the human environment.”

In this particular instance, FOA had argued: “NPS violated NEPA because it lacked information about deer movement on the Seashore that was essential to the decision-making process.” Specifically, FOA claimed information about the deer movement across the Seashore was essential because SAT had warned that without “information regarding whether deer populations on the island move east to west in any significant way, it would be impossible to effectively evaluate how to deal with the alleged deer issues on the Seashore.”

The federal appeals court rejected FOA’s characterization of SAT’s position. In the opinion of the court, there was no suggestion in the SAT Final Report that “the SAT lacked sufficient information about deer movement to make a recommendation or that NPS needed that information to develop the alternatives.”

While SAT thought that it needed “a more detailed understanding of deer movements” if it was going to make “management recommendations for individual deer or clusters of units,” the court noted the SAT Final Report acknowledged that “little is known about individual deer movements at the Seashore” to make management recommendations for individual deer or clusters of units. Moreover, in the opinion of the federal appeals court, SAT had further explored the issue and reviewed other information about individual deer or cluster of units before determining this information was “not necessary for its recommendation.”

As a result, the federal appeals court concluded: “NPS was not required to obtain the information about deer movement because it was not essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives.”

In so doing, the federal appeals court also addressed FOA’s argument that the Plan/EIS failed to “address the SAT’s determination that this missing data could better inform management decisions in each of the diverse areas of the Seashore.” In the opinion of the court, the terms “helpful” and “essential” were not synonymous. Specifically, within the context of NEPA, the court concluded “the fact that the data might have been ‘helpful’ does not establish that it was ‘essential’ to reasoned decision making.”

“Hard Look” in EIS FOA had also argued that NPS failed to take the requisite “hard look” under NEPA in the EIS to examine “the differences between the deer population on the eastern and western portions of the island when making its decision.” According to FOA, the “record is replete with evidence demonstrating that the NPS’s experts recommended and developed different management strategies for areas on the eastern portion of the Seashore and areas on the western portion of the Seashore.”

The federal appeals court acknowledged evidence on the record indicated “the deer populations on the eastern and western portions of the island differ.” Moreover, the court found some communications among members of SAT had suggested “it might be beneficial to distinguish between the two populations.” That being said, the court noted: “The SAT Final Report does not state that the eastern and western portions of the Seashore need to be managed differently.” Instead, the court found the SAT Final Report had provided specific management recommendations from west to east on

the Seashore for the private residential communities, a maritime forest and a historic core site.

More importantly, the federal appeals court acknowledged that NPS was “not bound by the SAT’s recommendations.” On the contrary, NPS had convened the SAT to “provide scientific based input (both natural and social) for consideration” by the interdisciplinary team (IDT). Accordingly, as characterized by the federal appeals court: “The SAT Final Report was simply information for the IDT to consider as it developed the alternatives.” Moreover, as noted by the court, “the SAT Final Report recognized that each of its recommendations presented difficulties and NPS would have to balance various factors in developing a plan for action.”

Based upon “a review of the copious administrative record,” the federal appeals court, therefore, determined NPS had indeed taken a “hard look” at the environmental consequences of the Plan: First, NPS had information from the studies conducted over the thirty years prior to the start of the NEPA process. Those studies provided data on many facets of

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the unique issues at the Seashore, including information on deer movement, impacts on vegetation, and previous deer management efforts. Second, it held internal meetings to identify the Plan’s objectives. Third, it enlisted the help of numerous experts to provide technical expertise, including the SAT and staff from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“NYS DEC”) and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (“USDA”). Fourth, upon receiving the SAT’s recommendations, it held a series of multi-day workshops and numerous calls where it discussed those recommendations.

Seashore-wide Deer Density On appeal, FOA had further argued “the decision to set a Seashorewide target deer density was arbitrary and capricious because the choice is contrary to the evidence in the record and the expert’s recommendations.” In particular, FOA claimed there was no evidence that the deer population in a wilderness area within the Seashore “needs to be reduced.”

As noted by the federal appeals court: “NEPA merely prohibits uninformed — rather than unwise — agency action.” Accordingly, the court found FOA’s argument that “a different course of action would better further the Plan’s objectives” was irrelevant. Under APA review, the court acknowledged that the “judicial role is relegated to affirming the agency’s decision as long as a rational basis is presented for the decision reached.” In this particular instance, the federal appeals 32 Parks & Recreation

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court found: “NPS has presented a rational basis for its decision to employ a Seashore-wide target deer density.” Moreover, the court found “the decision does not conflict with the recommendations of the SAT and the IDT”: Although the SAT Final Report did not propose a Seashore-wide target deer density, nowhere in the SAT Final Report is there any indication that the SAT thought that the use of a Seashore-wide target deer density was an inappropriate way to deal with the problem.

The federal appeals court further noted the NPS had “ruled out a site-specific deer density target approach in favor of a Seashorewide target deer density” because NPS lacked “site-specific information about how the lowered deer density would affect Seashore resources.” In the absence of such site-specific information, the court found the “Seashore-wide target density” adopted by NPS was “intended to balance anticipated benefits associated with a reduced deer population with consideration for available resources and the cost of implementation.”

In addition, the federal appeals court found NPS had complied with NEPA regulatory requirements by briefly discussing the environmental implications and providing a rationale and reasons in the EIS for “eliminating alternatives from detailed study.” 40 C.F.R. § 1502.14(a). In so doing, the court noted that NEPA does not require an agency to “accord environmental concerns any more weight in the decision-making process than other appropriate concerns such as economic or social benefits.” In this particular instance, the court found NPS was “not weighing

environmental concerns against economic or social concerns, but rather weighing competing environmental issues.”

While deer might be considered “sympathetic” and “sentient creatures,” particularly for FOA, the court noted: “NEPA is not an animal protection statute.” In this particular instance, the federal appeals court found NPS had complied with NEPA because the deer were “only one of many environmental factors” to be considered in an EIS to establish management plans for the Seashore. Specifically, the court cited evidence that “the Seashore-wide target deer density level furthers the Plan’s objectives to protect native vegetation and promote its natural regeneration.”

While NPS did not study the impact of the deer on the vegetation in each distinct area of the Seashore, under APA review, the federal appeals court held NPS “was not required to do so because other evidence provided a rational basis for its decision.” While recognizing “it is always possible to explore a subject more deeply and to discuss it more thoroughly,” the federal appeals court found the APA simply requires “the line-drawing decisions necessitated by this fact of life are vested in the agencies, not the courts.” In this particular instance, the court found NPS had indeed “articulated a rational basis for its choice,” and therefore, held the agency’s decision was not “arbitrary nor capricious” in violation of the APA: It was reasonable for NPS to rely on the information obtained from the other areas of the Seashore, along with a study demonstrating that deer densities exceeding 20 deer per square mile negatively affect veg-

etation, to conclude that reducing the deer density to 20 deer per square mile throughout the Seashore would further the objective to protect the Seashore’s natural vegetation.

Consider All Reasonable Alternatives On appeal, FOA had also argued NPS had “violated NEPA because it did not adequately consider all of the reasonable alternatives,” including FOA’s suggested fourth action alternative that included all of the shared “common elements” identified in the three action alternatives. As noted by the court, these three action alternatives all included “measures to reduce the deer population that ranged in severity from fertility control to sharpshooting,” as well as “public education and fencing that were aimed at managing the impacts of the remaining deer population.”

While compliance with NEPA regulations requires an agency to “rigorously explore and objectively evaluate all reasonable alternatives,” the federal appeals court acknowledged it was “well-settled that under NEPA the range of alternatives that must be discussed is a matter within an agency’s discretion.” 40 C.F.R. § 1502.14(a). Accordingly, the court found NPS was “not obligated to consider in detail each and every conceivable variation of the alternatives stated.” Instead, compliance with NEPA would only require NPS to “consider such alternatives to the proposed action as may partially or completely meet the proposal’s goal.”

In this particular instance, NPS had initiated a lengthy NEPA process to produce a plan that addressed “the increase in the deer population was negatively affecting the Seashore.” The proposed agency goal of the NPS Plan was to “manage a viable white-tailed deer population in the Seashore” in a manner which was “supportive of the other objectives for this plan/ EIS.” Those other objectives included, among other things, “promoting natural regeneration of native vegetation and protecting vegetation communities from a high level of deer browsing.” In order to achieve those vegetation objectives, the federal appeals court found NPS had “reasonably determined that a reduction in the deer population was necessary” to achieve a “target population density,” which would “allow the recovery of vegetation impacted by heavy browsing.”

Since the FOA’s proposed alternative did not include a strategy or “mechanism to reduce the deer population,” the court found the FOA’s proposed alternative “fails to further the Plan’s vegetation objectives.” As a result, the

federal district court held that NPS was not obligated to consider FOA’s proposed fourth action alternative.

Conclusion Having found NPS had “considered a reasonable range of alternatives” and the selection of an alternative which implemented a “Seashore-wide target deer density level” that was reasonably related to the stated management objectives in the EIS, the federal appeals court affirmed the judgment of the federal district court in favor of NPS. For more information, see “NEPA Challenge to Park Sharpshooters for Deer Control,” James C. Kozlowski, Parks & Recreation, Oct. 2011, Vol. 46, Iss. 10 (tinyurl.com/ ybnk6ukz); and search “Fire Island” on YouTube (tinyurl. com/yd4epcbh).

James C. Kozlowski, J.D., Ph.D., is an Attorney and Associate Professor in the School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management at George Mason University (jkozlows@ gmu.edu). Webpage with link to law review articles archive (1982 to present): mason. gmu.edu/~jkozlows.

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Park and Recreation Month honors the heroes who make the profession essential to communities

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he people of parks and recreation have faced some extreme challenges in recent months, and the myriad ways these professionals have pivoted and stepped in to meet the needs of their communities are awe-inspiring.

Right now, our country — and the world — is facing a pandemic, systemic racism, hunger, homelessness, the opioid crisis and many other tragedies that are presenting challenges for communities. As a field focused on building community and ensuring the health and well-being of the people they serve, park and recreation professionals are the heroes the world needs now more than ever.

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Park and Recreation Month may not look the same this year. In fact, many things may never look the same in the future. But, this shift provides an opportunity to show the world how critical parks and recreation is and to tell the stories of the people who are caring for our public spaces and managing the many programs intended to enhance quality of life for all people. This Park and Recreation Month, we will begin to redefine the field of parks and recreation as an essential, vital necessity by sharing how the people at the heart of these parks and recreation facilities are frontline staff, confronting our most pressing health, environmental and social challenges. See the sidebar below for a list of our P&R Month champions.

Meet Our Park and Recreation Month Heroes The immense impact that park and recreation professionals are making in their communities is worth celebrating, and these stories are all testaments to the true value of these heroes. Be sure to follow along on NRPA’s social media pages throughout the month to learn about these professionals we will be highlighting: 1. Aaron Watson — Mercer County Park Commission 2. Alicia Eckhart — City of Fairborn Parks and Recreation Division 3. Angela Summers — City of Henderson 4. Anthony Calabrese — Fairfield Parks and Recreation 5. Bill Tinsley — Bonnet Springs Park 6. Bonnie Gray — Prince William County Parks, Recreation & Tourism 7. Brad Wilson — Naperville Park District 8. Caren Lewis — Jaffrey Parks & Recreation 9. Carlos Garcia — City of Bakersfield Recreation and Parks 10. Cathy Hankins — City of Mobile Parks & Recreation 11. Christie Bruner — City of St. Petersburg Parks & Recreation, Healthy St. Pete 12. Charles (Chuck) Butterfield — Sarasota County Government, Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources 13. Darrell Hawks — Friends of Mill Ridge Park 14. David Ekness — El Dorado Hills CSD 15. David Mohr — Lindenhurst Park District 16. Doug Kane — Whitefish Bay Recreation 17. Edric Diaz — City of Sanford Parks and Recreation Department 18. Elaine Fox and Robin Pfenning — Gurnee Park District

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19. Emerald P. Bowman — City of WinstonSalem Recreation and Parks 20. Eric Muecke — Pasadena Texas Parks and Recreation 21. Erica Perez — Town of Queen Creek Recreation 22. Jason Lang — East Goshen Township Parks and Recreation 23. Jerome Leland — City of Mobile Parks & Recreation 24. Jody Becker — Town of Gilbert 25. Joe Pruitt —Gwinnett County Parks and Recreation 26. John DeKemper — Cornelius Parks, Arts, Recreation and Culture 27. John R. Sefton, Jr. — City of Peoria 28. Kathy Kline — West Allis-West Milwaukee Recreation and Community Services 29. Kelley Morgan — IDNR-Mounds State Park 30. Kim McCormack — Gurnee Park District 31. Kurt Wolf — City of McCall 32. Lauren Wood — Chesterfield County Parks & Recreation 33. Leon Younger — PROS Consulting 34. Leonard Hawkins — Mobile Tennis Center 35. Lynanne Dellerman-Silverthorn — Town of Oro Valley 36. Mariana Espinoza — Kyle Parks and Recreation Department

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37. Michael Marshall — Camp Verde Parks and Recreation 38. Paul Blake — Garden City Recreation 39. Paulette Murphy — City of Miami Gardens Parks and Recreation 40. Rachel Waldron — City of Dunwoody 41. Randi Wyatt and Celeste Rogers — City of Pearland Parks and Recreation 42. Rebecca Moore — Northern Illinois Special Recreation Association (NISRA) 43. Richard Zavala — City of Fort Worth Park & Recreation Department 44. Robert Jennings — Durham Parks and Recreation 45. Sabrina Hinkens — Gurnee Park District 46. Sharon Hunter-Payne — Columbus, Georgia, Consolidated Government 47. Shaun Beasley — Clearwater Parks & Recreation 48. Skot Latona — South Suburban Parks & Recreation 49. Stuart Brown — Town of Mammoth Lakes 50. Ta’Shelya Bynum — Albany Recreation & Parks 51. Tricia Schwall — City of Lake Forest 52. Wally Majors — Boynton Beach Recreation and Parks Department

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When the City of Pearland Parks and Recreation’s Knapp Activity Center in Texas had to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Randi Wyatt, senior programs coordinator, and Celeste Rogers, senior programs specialist, knew they had to work hard and fast to come up with a solution to make sure older adults in the community who relied on the center for meals would still be able to get them.

Wyatt and Rogers coordinated with

poverty in the community. During the COVID-19 crisis, Kline has stepped up to help serve breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday at a walk-up/drive-up site to ensure the children who rely on the center continue to receive nutritious meals.

“Kathy goes above and beyond to ensure that the children are safe, cared for and have access to the same fun programs and activities that their peers living elsewhere have,” says Shelly Strasser, director of recreation and community services for West Allis-West Milwaukee Recreation and Community Services. “She always puts the needs of the center and the children first.”

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Responding to COVID-19

their food service provider and department heads to implement a plan that has allowed them to continue to serve around 120 meals per week in a drive-through setup that ensures safety and physical distancing, as well as deliver 30 to 40 meals per week to those who are homebound.

In Wisconsin, Kathy Kline of West Allis-West Milwaukee Recreation and Community Services has transformed the Morgan Grove Family Center, where she serves as the director. The center is unique because it is housed in a twobedroom apartment and serves children living in a subsidized housing complex that has the highest level of

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Here are just a few of the nominations we received as part of our “Celebrating YOU this July” campaign for Park and Recreation Month.

“It’s Joe’s valued work ethic that makes collaborating with community partners seamless and allows for quick mobilization of our county resources to support basic essential needs of residents, including good housing, transportation and safety,” says Mark Patterson, deputy director for Gwinnett County Parks and Recreation.

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ness, as well as repairing damage or vandalism in parks, restrooms and facilities. In just one year, the team has replaced numerous restroom gates, removed 18 tons of trash in a nearby riverbed and repaired numerous irrigation heads — all making a huge impact on the safety and cleanliness of the parks in the city.

“Carlos is an exemplary, yet humble, employee who displays passion for people and parks. Bakersfield is blessed that Carlos chose the recreation and parks department to share his many talents in which to serve the community,” says Dianne Hoover, director of the City of Bakersfield Recreation and Parks Department.

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Carlos Garcia, the park services coordinator for the Rapid Response Team at City of Bakersfield Recreation and Parks in California, leads a team that is responsible for working with people experiencing homeless-

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On a normal day in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Joe Pruitt, the natural and cultural resources section coordinator for Gwinnett County Parks and Recreation, is managing projects regarding invasive species, performing historic site rehabilitation or educating kids on a tour of the department’s working farm. When the pandemic began in Georgia, Pruitt personally handled the movement of more than 52 tons of perishable food, non-perishable food and personal care products to people in the community. His selfless work enabled more than 2,600 families to get the essential items they needed during the pandemic.

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A Career Move Edric Diaz started with the City of Sanford Parks and Recreation Department in Florida as a parttime employee, cleaning restrooms and opening and closing park sites.

After completing scheduled tasks, he would check the area to see if there was any other work or repairs needed to be made — cutting low tree limbs or fixing a sprinkler head. Diaz was promoted to a fulltime maintenance position with the department in 2017, and in 2018, he was promoted again to a lead maintenance worker position.

According to Robert Beall, the operations manager for City of Sanford, “Mr. Diaz comes to work anytime he’s needed and completes his work with a smile. He continues to want to learn more about the job and instills this in the staff working with him. He is a positive inspiration for all to model after.”

For the past 48 years, Doug Kane, the adult sports coordinator for Whitefish Bay Recreation, has led the only badminton program in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. Kane has been leading this Wednesday program in Whitefish Bay since 1975 and has known many of the participants since they were teenagers — who are now bringing their own teenagers to play with

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK PATTERSON

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PHOTO COURTESY OF ANGELA SUMMERS

PHOTO COURTESY OF MINDY WEAVER

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Paulette Murphy has always had a way of bringing a community together and has made a huge impact on many people during her more than 28-year career. She has climbed the ladder and served many roles, from being a recreation specialist early in her career to her current position as the director for City of Miami Gardens Parks and Recreation.

While every promotion left the kids in Murphy’s programs sad to see her go, some of those kids were so inspired by her, they went into the profession themselves. “I was one of those teary-eyed kids and as soon as I was old enough to get a job, parks and recreation [was] where I wanted to work,” says Antoinette King, the assistant community center manager at City of Miami Gardens Parks and Recreation, who now works for Murphy, her beloved mentor.

38 PHOTO COURTESY OF PAUL BLAKE

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEANNA JOHANN

22 PHOTO COURTESY OF JASON LANG

PHOTO COURTESY OF LORI WILLIAMS

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them. Kane also launched a youth badminton camp in 2014, with a goal of growing a love for the sport from an early age.

“If ever there was a case for recreation programs bringing [a] community together, it could be found by entering our field house on any given Wednesday night,” says Anthony Iracki, Kane’s colleague and recreation supervisor at Whitefish Bay Recreation. “I admire [Doug’s] perseverance and commitment and feel fortunate to know him.”

This Park and Recreation Month, be sure to thank your staff, colleagues, peers and yourself for the good work you continue to do. Share your story on social media using #WeAreParksAndRec and show the world what we already know about the people of parks and recreation: You are strong. You are confident.

You are selfless. You are passionate.

You are driven. You are essential.

YOU are parks and recreation!

For detailed photo information, visit nrpa.org/CelebratingYou. Cort Jones is NRPA’s Communications Manager (cjones@nrpa.org).

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Parks and Recreation in a

P STPANDEMIC World

From best practice to next practice, the top 10 trends impacting the field

By Neelay Bhatt

O

n March 1, 2020, it was business as usual in the United States.

By June 1, however, the world looked dramatically different — Disney closed, the NBA paused, Fourth of July celebrations and large public gatherings were canceled, and more than 50 percent of park agencies faced budget cuts into 2021. What can we expect

by October 1? Who knows?

Predictability, stability and the status quo are passé. Welcome to the era of adaptability, agility and innovation.

42 Parks & Recreation

Why Next Practice?

As we enter a very different Park and Recreation Month compared to past years, two things are abun-

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dantly clear: (1) park and recreation professionals have never been more essential; and (2) pre-pandemic ways of doing things must change.

A wise person once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Similarly, best practices from a pre-pandemic era will not help us chart the future of our profession.

We need to move away from best

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P O S T- P A N D E M I C

practices and embrace next practices.

This does not mean discarding everything you know from the past, but rather letting go of the “way you’ve always done it” to create and embrace a new way of doing things.

To view some key differences between following best practices and creating next practices, see the chart on the right.

Top 10 Next Practices This initiative to determine the top 10 next practices started with me posting a daily trend to social media for all of April 2020 and then morphed into a national survey (surveymonkey.com/r/Next Practices) with participation from 879 respondents from 42 states and the District of Columbia. Respondents were asked to prioritize the top 10 trends they personally agree with the most and the top 10 trends that will impact them professionally the most.

The respondents were approximately 65 percent female and 35 percent male, with one respondent identifying as non-binary. From an age standpoint, 53 percent of all respondents were between the ages of 35 and 54; with 26 percent in the 18 to 34 group, 21 percent in the 55 to 74 group and less than Trends in Parks and Recreation Survey: Respondents 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Under 18

18-34

35-54

55-74

75+

Age

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Best Practice

Next Practice

Is based on the past

Is aimed at the future

Promotes conformity

Promotes customization

Follows the trend

Bucks the trend

Is safe and comfortable

Is uncertain and uncomfortable

Is about being a follower

Is about being a leader

0.5 percent in the 75 and older group. See the chart below.

The trends were ranked by SurveyMonkey using a combination of the total responses for each choice and the weighted average (calculated by where respondents placed the option in their list) of the respondents’ choices.

Following are the top 10 trends from the survey (Note: This is not an attempt to simply predict future trends, but rather to collectively shape them):

1

In-person offerings and virtual programming will coexist.

At the beginning of March 2020, a miniscule number of park and recreation agencies likely had virtual recreation programming. As the pandemic-induced shutdowns began, the city of Watsonville, California, launched one of the earliest virtual recreation centers, whereby patrons can access programming and resources online.

Since then, NRPA Parks Snapshot data has shown that as of mid-April, more than 60 percent of agencies have launched virtual recreation programming, offering everything from virtual fitness classes and sports camps to virtual teen and senior centers.

Even as in-person programs restart, there will be opportunities to continue virtual offerings to serve audiences that may be un-

willing or unable to participate in person due to health, transportation, bad weather or any other reason. In addition, virtual programming can help agencies grow program participation beyond their limited facility space and target users who live beyond their geographic boundaries.

2

People will view access to parks/outdoors as a right, not a luxury.

As the pandemic shut down everything, the one avenue for maintaining people’s physical and mental wellbeing were the parks, open spaces or trails they could access. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department both estimate 30 percent or higher visitation rates at their state parks compared to last year. The Connecticut Trail Census reported a 216 percent increase and the Virginia Capital Trail saw a 65 percent increase in trail usage compared to last year.

This increased usage will result in increased advocacy and, hopefully, funding support, as individuals in their communities expect park access and their leaders to embrace the goal of everyone having access to a quality park within a 10-minute walk of home as a minimum standard. In the spirit of the times, it is even more important that parks are not only accessible, but also welcoming for all.

3

Zoom will be a verb.

Web conferencing is an essential part of how people keep up with personal connections (Zoom birthday parties, anyone?) and professional responsibilities. The most popular platform in the United States is Zoom (43 percent market share) followed by GoToWebinar and Webex. In the United States alone during March 2020, Zoom had 300 million people in daily meetings, while Webex logged 14 billion meeting minutes globally.

These virtual meetings have illustrated that not every meeting needs to be in person or requires people to jump on a plane or drive several hours to attend. Additionally, while a digital divide still exists, virtual public meetings should be a requirement in future park system planning efforts to provide additional engagement avenues for those who can’t attend in person.

Besides the obvious efficiencies for time and travel costs, virtual meetings will positively impact the environment as we reduce our carbon footprint (and buy fewer pants, too).

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5

Our understanding of truly essential workers will change.

Healthcare professionals, grocery store workers and teachers are professions that have been repeatedly highlighted, and deservedly, as essential workers.

At the same time, park and recreation professionals performed all those roles. From handing out masks (e.g., Hilton-Parma Parks and Recreation, New York) and providing emergency health services (e.g., Broward County Parks and Recreation, Florida: drivethrough COVID-19 testing sites), to serving meals (e.g., Baltimore County Parks and Recreation, Maryland, and Indy Parks and Recreation, Indiana) and virtually teaching everything from STEM programs to baking — park and recreation professionals did it all.

As we celebrate our essential park and recreation professionals, how can agencies and academic institutions tell this story to attract and recruit the Gen Z audience that is not just looking to make money, but rather make an impact?

Basic personal hygiene and public sanitation requirements will increase by significant levels.

This was the number one trend participants agreed with personally.

Along with increased personal handwashing, public sanitation requirements and community expectations will be significantly higher. The foremost question users will have as they determine participation will be: “Is it safe for me, my child or my family?”

The new safety and hygiene stan

dards already require increased personal protective equipment, including gloves and face masks, particularly for customer-facing environments. Agencies will implement new cleaning guidelines for office spaces and recreation facilities, resulting in increased staffing and additional time between classes and rentals to ensure compliance. Park structures and amenities, including playgrounds, benches, picnic tables and outdoor exercise equipment — that were not expected to be sanitized previously — will require disinfecting as well.

Agencies may have dedicated staffing positions (e.g., hygiene stewards or chief hygiene officers) to help monitor safe hygiene practices and physical distancing.

Needless to say, all of these will result in incremental costs for departments that should look at opportunities to partner with hospitals and hygiene and sanitizer product companies to provide the stamp of approval for their disinfecting practices.

Currently, the best marketing pitch is not the newest facility nor the cheapest program, but the safest experience.

Virtual meeting platforms illustrate that not every meeting needs to be in person or requires people to jump on an airplane.

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6

Permanent office spaces will shrink as work from home and remote working become an expectation, not a perk.

A number of P&R roles will require a presence in the office, but COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated that it is not required of every role and not every single day.

Considering the growing commute times in large urban systems, the desire for better work-life balance and flexibility by the millennial and Gen-Z workforce, and technology that connects us at all times, remote working is very appealing. According to a Glassdoor study (tinyurl.com/y6ugc4p3), 89 percent of millennials would choose better benefits over a pay raise, while the 2019 State of Remote Work report (tinyurl.com/ yyscr9z6) states that U.S. companies that support remote work have 25 percent lower turnover.

What’s more, 71 percent of U.S. respondents agree that the ability to work remotely would make them more likely to choose one employer over another.

As agencies compete to hire and retain the best talents, flexible and remote work policies will be a competitive advantage. These policies can also help lower costs by reducing physical footprints for offices, parking, etc.

Also, agencies could be more inclusive in hiring non-traditional and differently abled staff who may be able to do great work, given that it doesn’t matter “where” they do it from.

7

Customer experiences will be more faceless and/or touchless.

This is where the pandemic has accelerated an existing trend. A two46 Parks & Recreation

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year study from McKinsey Global Institute (tinyurl.com/y62qktu8) suggests that by 2030, intelligent agents and robots could eliminate as much as 30 percent of the world’s human labor, displacing the jobs of as many as 800 million people while creating new ones. The fear of contact that many immunocompromised individuals have will accelerate the touchless experience, while job losses from artificial intelligence and automation will make experiences more faceless.

From online registration to digital payments, this already occurs in parks and recreation nationwide.

The front desk experience at recreation centers could omit desks and feature only self-serve kiosks with guest service attendants or a plexiglass barrier and touchless/cashless payments similar to many grocery stores today. More mobile-friendly and ADA-accessible websites will ensure customers can find all information on their personal device and minimize the need for face-toface engagement to the actual participation in a program or activity.

8

Offer less handshakes and more fist bumps or namastes.

This may, hopefully, be a shortlived scenario but could lead to some awkward interactions.

Agencies will need to be sensitive to individual comfort levels around preferred greetings — whether it is for an in-person interview or meeting or for greeting community members in the park or at an event.

Just like professional athletes have their signature handshakes with their teammates, agencies could create their own signature greeting that could become a shared language among their staff.

9

Being busy is less important than being present.

For too long, we have been in a culture that glorifies busy. Agencies have built an effort-based culture where being busy is often equated with being productive.

The pandemic has made us take a collective pause, slow down and be mindful. More people will realize that the treadmill of life that individuals and organizations are on is not sustainable. Agencies may better define their core offerings, stop trying to be all things to all people and learn to say, “No.” It would be a tragedy if we didn’t continue to get outside and smell the roses (or walk the trail), especially since that is something that we, in parks and recreation, tell everyone else to do. Be. More. Present.

10

Esports will continue to grow exponentially with virtual versions of major sports.

This is yet another case of someone’s crisis becoming someone else’s opportunity. As sports events and leagues started getting canceled, playing and watching esports began to accelerate.

Verizon reported that U.S. peakhour usage was up 75 percent in the first week of quarantine and Twitch, one of the world’s biggest streaming platforms for gamers, estimated it had grown its audience by up to one-third in March alone.

From NBA 2K20 to Virtual Madrid Open Tennis, every major sport dove deeper into esports. NASCAR has been one of the most successful with its eNASCAR Series, attracting a peak of 1.3 million viewers for one race.

Increasing the diversity of leadership teams leads to more and better innovation.

Esports is now mainstream and, even without the live event spectators, provides significant opportunities for community engagement.

Agencies should continue building dedicated esports spaces, providing it within summer camp offerings and partnering with local academic institutions, tech companies, hardware providers and gamers to, eventually, make esports one of their core program offerings.

A Moment of Zen: Keep evolving. Today’s next practice will become tomorrow’s best practice.

How Your Organization Can Be a Next Practice Organization

1

Champion true diversity, equity and inclusion of people (and ideas).

The best ideas come from the most diverse perspectives and life stories. A 2018 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study (tinyurl.com/ yb7dfb43) of 1,700 different companies across eight countries found that “increasing the diversity of leadership teams leads to more and better innovation and improved financial performance.” Companies with more diverse management teams have 19 percent higher revenue due to innovation compared to those with below average diversity.

Park and recreation agencies can benefit from this diversityinnovation premium when leaders intentionally support and elevate diverse perspectives and differing voices throughout the organization.

In the end, let the best idea win!

2

failure (and being blamed for it), they will seek tried and tested choices and simply do what they’ve always done.

Build a blame-free culture that supports failure.

Emulating best practices allows for fail-safe strategies that help you do just enough so that you “don’t fail,” but don’t necessarily ensure you “do succeed.” Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Reed Hastings and Elon Musk didn’t build Ford, Disney, Apple, Netflix or Tesla/SpaceX, respectively, by trying “not to fail.” They did it by repeatedly failing and innovating until it worked.

Round Rock Parks and Recreation Department in Texas utilizes a “Shark Tank” style approach where staff present new ideas, service or events that the department funds, resulting in such successful events as Pop Up Play Day and Water Adventure Camp.

The Milwaukee Public Schools Department of Recreation and Community Services (Milwaukee Recreation) went further by combining a “Shark Tank” style activity as a part of its work with equity. Staff teams pitched ideas to help make an area of the department’s offerings become more equitable to the community.

For these initiatives to sustain, it is important that leadership creates a safe space for new ideas and continues to support the staff even when they fail. If staff members are afraid of

3

Be open to “aha” moments beyond your own industry and geography.

Adopting existing best practices can help improve existing business models, but not when a pandemic may have entirely transformed that model.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz got the inspiration for expresso from visiting Milan and modeled the company from a coffee shop to become the third place (after home and work) in people’s daily lives. What can your organization learn from the way the Prime Minister of New Zealand led her response to the pandemic, how the German Bundesliga restarted their soccer league without fans or what teachers and kids worldwide have done to adapt to e-learning virtually overnight?

A Moment of Zen: Change is coming: Be the force for change or you will be forced to change.

Final Thought In a world of Blockbusters, always be a Netflix.

Neelay Bhatt is Vice President of PROS Consulting Inc. (neelay.bhatt@prosconsulting.com).

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Spokane’s Riverfront Pavilion How this renovation in Washington state serves as a portal to the past while looking toward the future

L

istening to Matt Walker talk about the Riverfront Park project in Spokane, Washington, it’s clear that his excitement is palpable.

“Pictures don’t do it justice. I wonder how amazing it looks from the sky,” he says.

Walker, a project manager for Hill International, is talking about Spokane’s Riverfront Park pavilion and its recent renovations, which began in December 2017 and were completed in September 2020. The project is one of many under the Riverfront Park Bond Program for which Hill is providing program, project and construction management. The renovation is a point of pride for its project manager, not only because of the role Walker played, but also because he’s been a Spokane resident for more than 16 years. This pavilion, he believes, will help breathe new life back into Spokane’s downtown Riverfront Park.

A Piece of History and a Warning to All Until recently, the pavilion had been hidden away by buildings.

Like unsightly carpet in an old house, “the pavilion was wall-towall concrete,” Walker says. “It was a concrete jungle.”

However, the pavilion didn’t always look this way.

In the 1970s, much like today, the world had the environment on its mind. It was the beginning of the “modern environmental movement,” a time when nature became 48 Parks & Recreation

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more than just breathtaking scenery. Scientific evidence had declared pollution a credible threat to a once thriving world that humans were slowly poisoning with vehicle emissions, factories and litter. Protecting the earth became part of the nation’s agenda, so the United States created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 and passed various “clean” legislation, like the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972.

In May 1974, Spokane hosted Expo ’74, a world’s fair with a

theme that was the first of its kind: “Celebrating Tomorrow’s Fresh New Environment.”

Nature had been on the minds of Spokane officials well before the start of the fair. Citizens and politicians wanted to clean up the industrial downtown area, including railroad tracks that intersected streets and caused traffic jams, and dilapidated buildings that blocked views of the cherished Spokane River and Falls.

Officials and community members considered Spokane Falls to be the city’s greatest attraction and wanted to reunite the people with its roaring waters. But the town was small and didn’t have the money to fund such big dreams. As a solution, officials devised a plan to host a world’s fair, which would allow the city to obtain state and federal funding to pay for the town’s cleanup. Once the fair left, the city could create a downtown park that would revitalize the community and bring nature back to its citizens, some

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CITY OF SPOKANE PARKS & RECREATION

By Elizabeth J. Zipf, LEED AP BD+C

Light blades allow for the pavilion’s structure to be translucent during the day, but pay homage to its original form when lit.

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of whom had been blinded by big, clunky commercial structures for so long they had forgotten that those water views even existed.

Ten countries participated in the fair. Each country received its own pavilion space to demonstrate its unique interpretations of the expo’s environmental theme. Some countries, like Canada, chose to celebrate nature by offering outdoor exhibits that featured a playground and outdoor theater, while Japan debuted a peaceful, lavish garden. In stark contrast, the United States used technology to deliver its environmental message.

The U.S. Pavilion had a lush green roof wrapped over most of the structure, an outrageous concept in 1974. Trees stood guard around the site, while the pavilion’s exterior resembled a giant, taut, tilted tent. A white canopy hugged the net cable structure that upheld it, and painted on the entrance wall

was the motto “The Earth Does Not Belong to Man, Man Belongs to the Earth,” a precursor to the IMAX film playing inside the tent.

The film juxtaposed breathtaking images of earthly treasures like the Grand Canyon with dramatic flashes of human destruction. Footage of dying trees weakened by smog, land torn up for its coal, and oil rig fires demonstrated humanity’s willingness to abuse earth’s resources. It was a cautionary tale that foreshadowed our world’s current climate crisis.

Nevertheless, Spokane maintained a hopeful outlook on the future and a pledge to keep its promise to the community.

Old Habits, New Century After the fair ended, the city followed through with its plan to turn the downtown fairgrounds into Riverfront Park, a 100-acre park that includes two islands, a diversion dam and powerhouse, seven bridges, and areas on the north and south bank of the Spokane River.

The pavilion stayed.

“The pavilion is like the Riverfront’s living room. It’s centrally located, and it’s the heart of the park,” Walker says. Yet over four decades, the introduction of buildings and structures diminished its grandeur and obscured views of the river and falls.

Demolition with a Conscience “The pavilion has an archeology and attitude all its own,” says Guy Michaelsen, a principal for Berger Partnership, the pavilion’s landscape architects. “Its reimagining was based more on subtraction than additions.

Our big move was to strip out all Recent renovations to Riverfront Park incorporate the environmental spirit of Expo ’74.

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structures but the historic net and the original integral ring building and treat the space as a wonderfully absurd and un-natural landscape.

Although demolition and construction can create environmental challenges, the team found ways to protect the grounds.

“We removed trees,” says Hill International’s Lorraine Mead, senior construction manager for the project, “but with the goal of planting two trees for every one removed.” They also removed berms of fill material that, now gone, allowed for panoramic views of the river, falls and surrounding greens.

“These renovations had the same environmental spirit of Expo ’74,” says Michaelsen, “but in ways no one could have ever imagined in 1974.” Thanks to decades of environmental research, the team could use innovative methodologies that didn’t exist 40 years ago.

“The site was previously occupied by rail yards and industrial activity that negatively impacted our soil,” says Berry Ellison, program manager for City of Spokane Parks and Recreation. “Creative stormwater engineering allowed us to avoid infiltration into poor subsurface soils and convey clean water back to the river.”

To help ensure proper site cleanup, the construction team capped all on-site contaminated soil with either clean soil or hardscape.

Workers also used contaminated soils excavated during construction of the Looff Carousel, ice rink, promenades and pavilion to build up the amphitheater bowl beneath the pavilion ring, which was then capped with clean soil, making it an environmentally friendly and cost-effective use of materials.

Because of the team’s thoughtful planning and hard work, the pavilion is now part of an open space

Riverfront Spokane is a place of community that brings natural beauty to the city’s residents.

surrounded by grass and plants, just like it was always intended to be. Walker says, “The renovated pavilion welcomes nature in instead of hiding from it. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like it.”

The Comeback Kid “Everyone loves a comeback,” Walker says. “And the pavilion came back in a big way, especially thanks to its light display.”

Because the pavilion’s original white cover was never meant to withstand the wear and tear of Mother Nature and time, officials removed it not long after the expo. The design team was tasked with coming up with a comparable replacement.

What was their solution? Install light blades. “The pavilion’s cable net structure and silhouette [are] the same as when [they were] built for the fair. But suddenly, here the pavilion is, in the 21st century, and it’s covered in these gorgeous lights that are bright, yet subtle, something to marvel at without feeling overwhelmed,” Walker says.

Michaelsen says that part of the idea for light blades came from the community’s input.

“Many in the community seemed enamored with the idea of covering the pavilion as it had been for Expo ’74,” Michaelsen says. “But as we worked with the community, we realized it was not a cover they wanted; they wanted to see the great shape of the structure. What emerged was the idea of letting the cable cone be translucent in the day, but become solid at night.”

The city’s P&R team couldn’t be happier with the results. “The design-build team understood the [parks department’s] desire for a covered space,” says Ellison. “Their idea to

cover the pavilion in a dynamic light display with added shade sails that preserved the view of the sky certainly exceeded our wildest imaginations.”

A Progressive Method Innovative ideas and technology were not the only elements of the project the city applauded. The project’s delivery method played a big role in the success of the project as well. “The parks department considered several delivery methods for this project,” Ellison says. “We ultimately chose progressive design-build because of the advantages of real-time estimating, immediate feedback from our contractor regarding design concepts and schedule constraints.

Ultimately, our ever-evolving program would have been nearly impossible with a traditional design-bidbuild delivery method.”

“This method’s flexibility allowed for dramatic changes to the project,” Mead says. “It gave the project lots of opportunity to excel, and each team involved was able to successfully collaborate and fulfill the owner’s ever-expanding, imaginative vision.”

A Portal to the Past For many, the pavilion was a celebration of Mother Nature and all she has to offer, as well as a symbol of hope for a better, cleaner world. Now, it sym-

bolizes the city itself and Spokane’s unwavering determination to bring its natural beauty back to its people.

In 1974, a fairgoer could visit the pavilion to learn that the world was in danger. Today, it’s a place where a park-goer can be immersed in the nature that environmentalists so earnestly want to protect.

It’s also a place of community. “A guiding principle of our design was that the experience within had to exceed the experience from afar,” Michaelsen says. “With every step closer to the pavilion, we wanted you to see something awesome, something that would excite you and draw you in.

In its reimagined state, the pavilion is better than ever from afar, especially at night, but more importantly, it’s an exceptional experience from within as well. And while most city icons require admission, the pavilion is a completely free public place. It’s a community treasure, not a tourist novelty.”

So far, the pavilion has hosted concerts, spin classes, a Native American ceremony, ghost stories, the mayor’s gala and weekend light shows. The openness of the pavilion, its accessibility and the misty falls it neighbors make it an even better place than the past could have ever imagined.

Elizabeth J. Zipf, LEED AP BD+C is Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Hill International (elizabethzipf@ hillintl.com).

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OPERATIONS The Build Goes On! Parks Build Community continues Grand Avenue Park renovation

By Paula M. Jacoby-Garrett

T

his year marks NRPA’s 10th Parks Build Community (PBC) project. Each year, a park is renovated or created in the city where the NRPA Annual Conference is held. For 2020, Grand Avenue Park in Orlando, Florida, was selected for renovation. The park is located southeast of the city center and is adjacent to a community center currently under renovation. Originally built as a school, the community center was designated as a historic landmark by the city of Orlando. Once completed, the community center will house a full-sized gymnasium, a pottery studio, and a full range of after-school and summer youth programs.

The adjacent playground and park area were created in 1938 and are undergoing renovation as part of the PBC project.

PHOTO COURTESY OF FOREVERLAWN

“We have two parallel projects going on simultaneously at this site.

The historic Grand Avenue Elementary School, built in 1926, was retired and slated for demolition a couple of years ago. The city of Orlando took ownership, and we’re restoring and repurposing the building as a neighborhood center and tripling its floor area with a new addition,” says Kenneth Pelham, landscape architect for the City of Orlando Families, Parks and Recre-

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ation Department (OFPRD). “That project is in the design and permitting stage, with construction to start early summer. It’ll wrap up in the summer of 2021. We intend it to be a showcase for our city. The NRPA Parks Build Community program gives us a fantastic opportunity to upgrade the adjacent park....We’ve completed the design of the amenities, and some of the items are already in production.”

“The Parks Build Community

projects we have undertaken have had a range of positive effects on the local communities, from creating safe spaces for children to play, to providing outdoor exercise equipment to enhance the health and wellness of community members, to adding environmental features that improve access to trees and plantings,” says Kristine Stratton, NRPA president and chief executive officer. “NRPA, the City of Orlando Families, Parks and Recreation Department and corporate donors are committed to making significant renovations to transform this area into a vibrant public space where residents of all ages can gather and play.”

The Project Goes On Earlier this year, everything changed dramatically with the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Lives have changed, and the businesses and organizations supporting the park and recreation field have had to transform. In response to the pandemic, NRPA announced that the 2020 NRPA Annual Conference would be held remotely, not in Orlando, as previously scheduled. Nonetheless, amid all this chaos and uncertainty, the 2020 Parks Build Community project will carry on. The renovation of Grand Avenue Park continues and will open in October ForeverLawn is taking part in the 2020 PBC project as a gesture of appreciation to the businesses in Florida that have supported the company.

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as initially planned.

NRPA, OFPRD and our PBC partners have dedicated themselves to seeing this project through to completion despite the hurdle of COVID-19. “I am very happy to say that the 2020 Parks Build Community project, Grand Avenue Park, will be completed,” says Stratton. “We remain dedicated to our partnership with OFPRD and our generous corporate donors to complete the renovation of this 12-acre park. NRPA recognizes how important this park is to the community and the people it serves.”

We Couldn’t Do It Without Our Donors “This is the first time that we’ve been involved with a PBC project,” says Kevin Kinsley, brand leader, Playground Grass, a subsidiary of ForeverLawn. “We have done thousands of jobs in Florida and [our involvement] is a small gesture of appreciation to all of the business Florida has provided to our company over the years. We are happy to step in and play a part in this project because, ultimately, it’s going to be a great park for the community.”

Designing, manufacturing the products and finishing the build are difficult tasks during a quarantine. “This is a new world for all of us and has presented unique challenges,” says Pelham. “NRPA’s member companies are negotiating how to manufacture the pieces around plant closures and personnel limits. I’m fortunate in that I’ve been able to make the shift to work from home seamlessly; it’s much more difficult for a company operating under stay-at-home

orders to build something. We’re profoundly grateful for the dedication of these companies to see it through, and we all have to be flexible in the way we go about getting to the finish line.”

Parks Help People Heal For Brad Buzard, general manager of Shade Systems, Inc., and donor to the PBC project, it was essential to do what they could, particularly during these times. “We are a long-standing NRPA member and wanted to do our part to beautify a worthy park location, especially since it is in Florida, our home state,” says Buzard. “And with the current COVID-19 crisis, we feel it is more important than ever to invest in our public parks, which offer fresh air and room to roam and engage in healthful activities for people who have been cooped up.”

“Parks are so important to our society. They bring communities and families together to enjoy recreational activities and events; they are amazing places to see and learn more about nature and wildlife; and they promote healthy lifestyles [through] playgrounds, sports fields, walking paths and hiking trails,” says Kara Oughton, marketing manager of Gared.

NRPA and its partners continue to move forward on the Grand Avenue Park project so that one day the community may enjoy all that this park has to offer. Stephanie Devine, vice president of marketing and brand strategy, UltraSite, captures it best: “[D]uring this trying time in our nation, now, more than ever, we need to come together in support of our parks and [the people] who love them. [We] believe in celebrating

The 2020 Parks Build Community Donors Include: BCI Burke Company (bciburke.com) GameTime/PlayCore (gametime.com) Greenfields Outdoor Fitness (gfoutdoorfitness.com) Musco Lighting (musco.com) Playground Grass by ForeverLawn (foreverlawn.com) Epic Outdoor Cinema (epicoutdoorcinema.com) DuMor Site Furnishings (dumor.com) Gared Sports (garedsports.com) Most Dependable Fountains, Inc. (mostdependable.com) Freenotes Harmony Park (freenotesharmonypark.com) Shade Systems, Inc. (shadesystemsinc.com) Ultra Site (ultra-site.com) community, celebrating parks, and celebrating a project to better the world around us.”

For more information about the 2020 Parks Build Community project and how you can be involved, contact Gina Mullins-Cohen, NRPA’s vice president of communications and chief marketing officer, at gcohen@nrpa.org.

Paula M. Jacoby-Garrett is a Freelance Writer based in Las Vegas, Nevada (paula.jacoby.garrett@ gmail.com).

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O P E R AT I O N S

Parks Build Community 2019: Baltimore Project Evaluation Year One report underwritten by Active Network, LLC, and BCI Burke Company, LLC

By Kevin Brady, J. Aaron Hipp and William Beam

T

he National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), with generous support from its Parks Build Community (PBC) Research Partners, BCI Burke Company, LLC, and Active Network, LLC, is conducting a five-year longitudinal evaluation of the health, public safety and economic impacts of its Baltimore PBC project. This project, completed in September 2019, renovated Catherine Street Park in the Carrolton Ridge neighborhood to the west of downtown.

NRPA, in conjunction with the research project’s principal investigators, J. Aaron Hipp and William Beam of North Carolina State University, began data collection in December 2018 shortly before construction began. The evaluation will end in December of 2023, pro-

ducing one year of pre-renovation data and four years of postrenovation results.

What We Know from Year One Data Collection To date, we have collected one round of pre- and post-renovation

data related to physical activity in the parks, as well as prerenovation data related to public safety, economics and community perceptions. Below is a summary of our conclusions.

Physical Health – In December 2018 and 2019, we conducted 52 hours of observations in the parks to analyze how often people were using each space, and how often they were physically active when doing so.

Due to the observations occurring in December, we noted light usage in both Catherine Street Park

Children play at the renovated Catherine Street Park in Baltimore, Maryland, during the 2019 NRPA Annual Conference.

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Table 1 Data Point

Year

Catherine Street Park

Control Park

2018

1.0 ppl/hour

1.8 ppl/hour

2019

1.1 ppl/hour

1.9 ppl/hour

Data Point

Year

Catherine Street Park

Control Park

Percentage of youth active during observations

2018

67% active

61% active

2019

89% active

59% active

Number of people observed per hour

and the control park — a similarsized park in a neighborhood with similar demographics and social economic status — in 2018 and 2019. However, for Catherine Street Park, children were much more physically active following the renovation compared to the control park (see Table 1).

Given the concerns over COVID-19, the evaluation team is currently working with the com-

+10% Catherine Street Park Change

+22 points

munity to determine the best way forward to hear ongoing feedback around the project, given health concerns, as well as maintenance and construction challenges also stemming from the pandemic.

Public Safety – Figure 1 (see page 56) is a visual showing crime levels in the areas immediately around the parks. Catherine Street Park experienced a significant increase in crime while the park was

Control Park

MAPS COURTESY OF WILLIAM BEAM

Catherine Street Park

Catherine Street Park Change

closed for renovation.

There is a growing body of research showing correlations between park and green-space renovations and crime reduction. We will analyze trends over time and compare these results with community perceptions around safety to get a full understanding of the renovation’s impact.

Economics – 2019 property assessment data reveals low property values in both neighborhoods around each park. The median home values were around $15,000 and $14,000 for Catherine Street Park and the control park, respectively, with most of the properties being valued at less than $30,000 (the red-, orange- and yellow-colored buildings below).

Baltimore City reassesses properties every three years, meaning we will have only one period of post-construction data collection (2022) to assess the renovation’s impact.

We will analyze property values from 2013 to 2016

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O P E R AT I O N S

so that we can better determine the difference that the Catherine Street Park renovation is making. As we have seen throughout the United States, COVID-19 is likely to impact not only the evaluation of this project, but also the community around the park far beyond the present time.

The data source for the public safety and economic data is the Baltimore City government.

Community Perceptions – According to a Summer 2019 survey conducted prior to the park’s reopening, residents were dissatisfied with each park space on a number of fronts — from the quality of amenities to the lack of programming opportunities for the community (see Figure 2).

NRPA is still determining when to safely conduct surveying given current public health challenges. In the final summer of community data collection, July 2023, we will conduct longer interviews with community members to give us a richer understanding of the renovation’s impact.

NRPA, with support from its PBC Research Partners, is conducting an evaluation of the 2019 PBC renovation project at Catherine Street Park.

Figure 1. Total Violent and Nonviolent Crime Incidents Catherine Street Park vs. Control Park, Sept. 2017-2019

800 738 700 634 600

617

588

■ Catherine Street Park

500

■ Control Park

Sept. ’17-’18

Sept. ’18-’19

Conclusion

Figure 2. Percent ‘Extremely Satisfied’ among survey respondents 38 responses in Catherine Street Park / 31 responses in Control Park 53% 49%

■ Catherine Street Park ■ Control Park

48% 41% 37% 31%

32% 27% 23%

22% 18% 11% 4%

Presence of other kids

56 Parks & Recreation

Availability Presence of General Play of open supervision/ cleanliness equipment spaces staff for kids

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Programs

6%

Fountains, restrooms

It is too early to know the renovation’s impact on the health, public safety and economics around Catherine Street Park, but the increases we have seen thus far in children’s physical activity are promising. NRPA will update this report on an annual basis to inform all stakeholders of our latest data and conclusions.

Kevin Brady is NRPA’s Senior Evaluation Manager (kbrady@nrpa.org). J. Aaron Hipp is Associate Professor of Community Health and Sustainability in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University (jahipp@ncsu.edu).

William Beam is a Graduate Assistant in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University (wtbeam@ncsu.edu).

Swim School 2020: The ReCreation of RECreation Why water safety education does not require a pool

By Jende K. Smith, CPRP, AFO

W

ithout a doubt, the summer of 2020 will be unforgettable for many reasons. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed pool operations, possibly forever. As we continue to see an increase in pool closure announcements, operators are now tasked with providing service to our communities while maintaining physical distancing — think of it as the “ReCreation of RECreation.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF JENDE K. SMITH

For the city of St. Joseph, Missouri, initial planning focused on the development of virtual educational sessions targeting a variety of safety topics. The biggest challenge was identifying ways to engage the community and encourage participation.

After many conversations with colleagues, one thing is clear: aquatics professionals are unanimously passionate about water safety, education and recreation. More importantly, we possess a strong calling to continue this mission. As a result, organizations within the Kan-

sas City Metro Aquatics Council (KCMAC) are working together to “pool” our resources to develop virtual programs.

This is where the ReCreation of RECreation Swim School 2020 begins. Embracing out-of-the-box thinking, planners quickly turned to a couple of free apps to get this project off the ground.

Apps for Water Safety Education If you’re not already using them, I suggest downloading Quik and Splice to your smartphone. Both apps have a short learning curve and will allow you to create a video masterpiece on your first try. Previously, both apps were used by city of St. Joseph staff to produce in-house staff recruitment commercials (tinyurl.com/ycmp5fyg).

This summer, they will be used to develop 30-second water safety commercials. Additional 5- to 15-minute educational videos will showcase family-based water safety workshops and activities.

Aquatics professionals are passionate about water safety and education, both in and out of the water.

Another curriculum feature will be the Pool Cool program presented by the Masonic Cancer Alliance and the University of Kansas Cancer Center. Pool Cool provides a comprehensive sunsafety campaign initially developed as a swim lesson companion. It will now complement our virtual Water Safety campaign and promote skin cancer awareness throughout the community. For more information, check out #kansaspoolcool.

Let’s not forget, summer is not just about water safety — it is also about fun. Consider what waterbased activities you can encourage in your hometown. Consider hosting squirt gun tie-dye (using drink mix as dye) as a fun, physical distancing backyard activity or lifejacket safety week with timedevent challenges. Worksheets and coloring pages are great for younger children and basic swimming skills can be showcased for when we’re all back in the pool.

For those who will offer water access this summer, what are your creative programming ideas? Will you offer family-based swim lessons or advanced-level lessons using an ondeck instructor? Remember, the goal is maintaining physical distancing while offering quality programming.

Additional topics for your own program can include: first aid, weather safety, why we have pool rules, victim recognition and what to do during an emergency. Don’t forget to check with your lifeguard training agency for water safety tools that can be incorporated into your program.

Have a safe, fun summer!

Jende K. Smith, CPRP, AFO, is Aquatics Supervisor for the city of St. Joseph, Missouri, and serves as an Adjunct Instructor in the Health, Physical Education and Recreation Department at Missouri Western State University (jsmith@ stjoemo.org).

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advertiser index

American Swing Products..................................................................58

(ISSN 0031-2215) is published monthly by the National Recreation and Park Association, 22377 Belmont Ridge Rd., Ashburn, VA 20148, a service organization supported by membership dues and voluntary contributions.

Copyright ©2020 by the National Recreation and Park Association. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Opinions expressed in signed articles are those of the writers and not necessarily those of NRPA. Issued to members at the annual subscription price of $30, included in dues. Subscription: $46 a year in the U.S.; $56 elsewhere. Single copy price: $7. Library rate: $58 a year in the U.S.; $68 elsewhere. Periodical postage paid at Ashburn, Virginia, and at additional mailing offices. Editorial and advertising offices at 22377 Belmont Ridge Rd., Ashburn, VA 20148. 703.858.0784. Postmaster, send address changes to Parks & Recreation, 22377 Belmont Ridge Rd., Ashburn, VA 20148.

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Park Bench

The new mosiac depicts a variety of life-sized marine creatures.

The MAP of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla PHOTO COURTESY OF P. GOTFREDSON

A public art piece in Kellogg Park celebrates marine life Art adds aesthetics and value to any public space, but some installations go beyond the conventional and astonish the viewer. The recently installed MAP of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla (California), located in Kellogg Park, does just that. Depicting a variety of life-sized marine creatures, from the great white shark to the spiny lobster, the highlight of the mosaic is the juvenile gray whale that spans the entire width of the artwork.

The mosaic highlights the best of what nature has to offer and was created as not only an art piece, but also as an educational tool for the public. This project would not have been possible without the artistic talents of lead artists Robin Brailsford and Wick Alexander, with additional assistance from artists Kelsy Hartley and Mariah Armstrong Conner. Their vision, attention to detail and knack for creating stunning portraits of each species produce unique and stunning undersea artwork. Using a patented method invented by Brailsford, the mosaic is fabricated in a studio space and then is set in concrete in a painstakingly detailed multiday process.

“Robin and I have completed many plaza monolithic mosaics (formally LithoMosaics) over the [past] 15 years,” states Alexander about their work. “The medium is generally used as way-finding, artistic accents and plaza designs. With the Grand Canyons of La Jolla, we were able to finally achieve the maximum effect of what the process can do like no other medium. With more than 100 marine creatures, from a 30-foot gray whale to a 4-inch nudibranch — each rendered to life scale — one can experience the sensation of a one-on-one encounter with each sea creature, like a diving experience.”

The project is funded by the Walter Munk Foundation and reflects his deep passion for the ocean. Munk passed away in February 2019, and although he did not see the mosaic installed, he was able to be a part of the planning process and see the piece almost entirely completed. A scientist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Munk was a pioneer in ocean science who was nicknamed the ‘Einstein of the Oceans’ for his contributions to oceanography. His foundation focuses on ocean awareness, education and conservation. His wife, Mary, continues his hard work on protecting local ocean habitats.

Taking three years and a staggering half-million hand-cut tiles to create, the final mosaic is approximately 2,800 square feet in size.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the public response to the mosaic has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Alexander. “Everyone seeing it for the first time says, ‘it is amazing’ and ‘it’s so beautiful!’ It is my belief that when someone is moved by beauty, they fall in love with beauty, and when someone loves something, they want to know more about it. And, they want to protect it. This is the ideal function of the Grand Canyons of La Jolla — to create an awareness of our place among all living things.”

— Paula M. Jacoby-Garrett, freelance writer located in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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YOU are a HERO - Thank You for Serving Your Communities COVID-19 Resources for Parks and Recreation Park and recreation professionals everywhere have stepped up to serve their communities in unprecedented ways during the COVID-19 pandemic. NRPA is here to support you and provide the most up-to-date resources related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In our dedicated resource center you can find: •

Printable infographics on how to use parks safely

•

Continually updated guidance for parks and recreation

•

Public policy updates and action alerts around key legislation affecting the field

•

Examples of how park and recreation agencies are responding to the pandemic

Find all these resources at: nrpa.org/Coronavirus

PARKS & RECREATION JULY 2020 ◆ PARK AND RECREATION MONTH ◆ CELEBRATING P&R PROFESSIONALS ◆ POST-PANDEMIC NEXT PRACTICES