Summing Up on Neighborhood Parks – Part 3

After cogitating on neighborhood parks for weeks, I have a concept to propose, a concept that may surprise many.  And that’s fine.  Many ideas, some of which turn out to be far-sighted, elicit that initial response.

I’ve recently written several posts about parks, particularly the disappointingly low usage of neighborhood parks, the smaller parks that offer mostly open grass with few amenities and little parking and that are primarily intended to serve the surrounding single-family neighborhoods.

I reached a tentative conclusion that the thought process behind neighborhood parks is flawed.  I then defended my data collection approach and responded to other comments.

Now, it’s time to offer some thoughts about what might be done with neighborhood parks.

My ideas shouldn’t be considered a screed against neighborhood parks or parks in general.  Indeed, my thinking is the reverse.  Much like encouraging a talented friend stuck in a dead-end job to look for a better opportunity, I’d like to find a way for neighborhood parks to become better used and more essential to the functioning of their communities.

Nor should my ideas be considered the end of the discussion.  Much as many of us have come to urbanism by incremental steps and insights, my hope is that the thoughts I offer here can serve as stepping stones on the path to the best and most practical solutions.

Lastly, I’ll refrain from mentioning parks by name.  There were a number of parks that flitted through my brain as I wrote, some in Petaluma and some in communities far from the North Bay.  But to mention specific parks would risk getting bogged down in details and defenses.  Instead, I encourage readers to explore their own memory banks for neighborhood parks and to plop the template I propose onto those parks.

Here’s the primary idea.  If a neighborhood park is big enough, which probably means at least 3 to 3.5 acres, let’s consider adding a small multi-family building near one end of the park.

This shouldn’t be a standard multi-family box, but something with a particular character.  I’m thinking at least two stories and possibly three.  And fairly small in footprint, perhaps as little as 8,000 square feet.  With three stories, that would provide up to perhaps 15 to 20 residential units ranging in size from 600 to 2,000 square feet.

With the multi-story height, the building would become the focal point of the neighborhood, attracting attention toward the local “downtown”.

The range in unit size would attract a range of tenants, although a particular target would be the seniors who spent much of their lives in the neighborhood.

“Aging in place” is a popular mantra among those active in senior living.  But polls have shown that many seniors want to age in place not because they have a particular attachment to the home in which they raised their families, but because they want to maintain long-time friendships and to continue shopping in the stores they know.  For those seniors, selling the family home and moving into a comfortable apartment a block away might work perfectly.  For seniors who still hope to host family Thanksgiving dinners, 1,500 square feet might be perfect, while others, perhaps widowed, might be most happy in 800 square feet.

If some of the apartments were even smaller, perhaps little more than micro-apartments, they might also attract young and single teachers or police officers who are just beginning their working lives.

With a good mix of apartment sizes, I could see a dynamic community arising.

I’d also argue for at least two of the ground floor units to be configured for retail use.  Perhaps the retail use wouldn’t be financially reasonable at first, so the building owner would be allowed to rent the spaces for residential use in the early years.  But my hope would be that the spaces would eventually house coffee shops where neighborhoods would congregate on Saturday mornings and delis where harried parents could buy ready-to-serve meals after a late day at work.

Also, as Leghorn Park in Petaluma is possibly showing us, there can be symbiosis between retail and park uses.  We’re ultimately a social species.  We’re more likely to have a lingering cup of coffee in an outside café if we’re overlooking a park full of laughing and playing children.

Also, provision should be made for adjoining bus stops.  They might not be used at first, but would allow plan for a future when a homeowner could buy a cup of coffee and then take the bus to the local rail station.

Parking would be a challenge.  Podium parking would be ideal, but financial realities would likely push toward tuck-under parking.

Now, let’s pull our focus back and look at site planning.  I noted that the multi-family building site should be near, but not at, one end of the park.  This configuration would separate small areas of the park from the remainder of the park.  For these small plots, I’d propose community gardens or other biologically productive uses.

A couple of years ago I wrote about a development in Davis called Village Homes.  I didn’t like the construction quality of the homes, but I thought there was much to emulate in the land plan, particularly the use of small parcels for community vineyards and fruit orchards.  It’s this kind of use that I’d propose for the small parcels separated from the rest of the park.

And in the larger part of the remaining park, I’d take hints from successful parks, such as Leghorn and McNear Parks in Petaluma, which offer a multitude of recreational opportunities.  It won’t be reasonable to assume that those multi-use successes can be endlessly cloned, but adding a few more recreational amenities to neighborhood parks would seem reasonable.  Basketball and bocce ball courts would be my top two suggestions, with sand volleyball close behind.  Of course, play equipment would remain as would grass areas for simple games of catch or three-flies-up.

Some may be asking how a city could afford these new improvements.  The answer is that a city need only spend a little seed money.

Let’s assume that a city proposes a new zone which allows multi-family housing to be integrated into an existing park and then conducts the process, including public involvement, to apply the new zone to an existing neighborhood park.   (Yes, I understand that public involvement would be filled with fireworks.  Many new ideas, no matter how well-founded, are greeted with skepticism.)  It’s even possible that grant funds would be available to defray most city expenses for this part of the development process.

The goal would be to present developers with a site where the development would be “by-right”, with the only remaining hurdle being site design and architectural approval.

For a multi-family site that is nearly entitled, a value per unit of $25,000 is often reasonable.  But this concept would require a different architectural and leasing approach.  If we use $10,000 per unit and assume 18 units, that would give us $180,000 in development value.  If instead of taking all cash, a city requires a developer to install the vineyard, fruit orchard, raised beds for community gardening, and/or sports courts, a developer might still bid perhaps $50,000 for the right to build and to own the apartments.

But a city would also collect impact fees from the new development, which may total close to $500,000.  Overall, a city could pocket something like a half-million dollars and get a park that would better suit the needs of its citizens.  Against the extent of the likely deficits looming before many North Bay cities, a half-million dollars may not be much, but it’d be a step in the right direction.  And it would move a neighborhood in a positive direction.

I expect that this idea is neither perfect nor likely to be well-received in most neighborhoods.  Indeed, I expect that a fair number of neighbors would be aghast.  But I like how it works on a number of levels.  Your input would be valued.  Ready, aim, fire.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Are We Fooling Ourselves about Parks?

I’ve previously written that one of the fuels of drivable suburbia is self-myths, stories about ourselves that we’d like to believe to be true, but aren’t.

Although it’s declining as a demographic segment, let me use the nuclear family as an example.  Mom fantasizes about serving drinks in a formal living room while wearing a black cocktail dress.  Dad thinks he’ll become a barbecue master with the right set-up and a bit of practice.  And both parents picture their children playing in a backyard pool before settling in to do homework in their study cubbyholes.

 But the reality is that Mom doesn’t even own a black cocktail dress, the last time Dad grilled anything other than hot dogs he needed a fire extinguisher to douse the flames, the pool is filled with moldering leaves, and the children haven’t done homework in months and will be lucky to get C’s.

But meanwhile the family found a home to support their myths, a four-bedroom house on a quarter-acre lot, surrounded by other four-bedroom houses on quarter-acre lots, and everyone drives everywhere because the low density can’t support walkability.  Meanwhile, no one is happy because the failure to conform to their myths weighs on them and because their suburban setting doesn’t meet their psychological needs.

(I suspect that the happiest folks are those who’re honest and insightful about how they live their lives and find homes that accommodate those lives.  But that’s a topic for another time.)

Today, I’ll offer another myth to add to the story.  The parents expect that their children will happily spend their Sunday afternoons gamboling in the grassy sward of a neighborhood park, perhaps romping with other children.  But the apparent reality is the children have no interest in neighborhood parks.  Nonetheless, because everyone from parents to zoning code authors to planning staffs to city councils believed that the neighborhood parks are needed, many exist, often empty but sucking up municipal funds.

This tentative conclusion is based on recent observations I’ve been making.  Twice before, I’ve written about the number of park users that I found around Petaluma on sunny Sunday afternoons.  I recently took another trip around town to collect a third set of data points.

There are five neighborhood parks at which I’m asked to make periodic observations in my role on the Petaluma Recreation, Music, and Parks Commission.  During my first springtime visit, I found 32 folks using the five parks.  Disheartened, I hoped for more during my next visit.  Instead the total had declined to 20.

Nor did the trend improve during my third springtime visit.  Again counting heads near midday on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, I found a total of eight people in my five parks.  Seven of them were clustered in a single park, with three of my parks completely empty.

Even more telling, every group of people that I spied was adult-led.  There wasn’t a single instance of a child or a group of children coming to a park on their own.  The myth of children going to a neighbor park without adult encouragement and supervision was apparently dead, at least on this Sunday afternoon in Petaluma.

That doesn’t mean that all Petaluma parks were underused on that day.  I continued onward to Leghorn Park, where I’d found had found over 100 park users on my previous visit.  This time, perhaps there wasn’t a Little League game being contested, the count was down to about 75, but good use was still being made of the broader range of park amenities.  And there was again a flow of people between the park and the adjoining Parkway Plaza shopping center.

However, I found only two people at Eagle Park, a park close to Leghorn and similar in size, but without the breadth of amenities or the retail proximity.  At least it was an improvement over the empty park that I’d found on my previous visit.

Lastly, I swung by McNear Park.  In response to a previous post, a reader suggested the McNear was the westside equivalent of Leghorn.  It was a good comment.  When I dropped by, there were about 50 people engaged in a variety of activities.  McNear lacks the breadth of facilities, the well-integrated design, and the retail proximity of Leghorn, but it stands far above the neighborhood parks on my checklist.

As I’ve written before, three Sundays of observations doesn’t prove anything.  There are people who spent years studying how parks are used and their insights should be rated far above mine.  However, among those people are writers such as William Whyte and Jan Gehl whose findings seemingly support my observations.

If my Sunday observations and broader studies with which they’re consistent are valid, what direction does that set for parks?

To begin, neighborhood parks, especially if all they include is a swath of grass, a few benches and a play structure, are badly underutilized and probably unneeded in their current form.

That isn’t to say that neighborhood parks can’t have a function.  In “Happy City”, author Charles Montgomery offers a supported argument that people are happier when they have a daily interaction with nature, even if the interaction is at a distance.  So, neighborhood parks, even if underused, may still function as a backdrop for relatively more contented lives.  So the challenge may be to reconfigure neighborhood parks toward the “biophilia” function and away from the mythical childhood play function, perhaps saving a few municipal dollars in the process.

Also, the decline of neighborhood parks doesn’t mean that parks in general are a failing idea.  I can name at least four other types of parks that are doing well.  Those types, with Petaluma examples, are:

·         Multi-faceted parks that attract a variety of users, reaching a critical mass where people show up to watch the people who are already there.  Petaluma examples: Leghorn and McNear Parks.

·         Parks for organized sports.  Petaluma examples: Lucchesi, Princeton, and the upcoming East Washington Park.

·         Native parks for hiking and biking.  Petaluma example: Helen Putnam Park.

·         Downtown plazas.  Petaluma examples: Putnam Plaza and, to a lesser extent, Walnut Park.

It’s an interesting time to be a parks commissioner.  I look forward to my continuing duties, especially if it means breaking down further myths.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)