City targets more active parks and recreation program

Starting with Five Points Park, the city is embracing a new parks philosophy. Constrained by budget limitations for years, how can staff create new recreation opportunities?

By David Conway
| 6:00 a.m. December 10, 2015

City Manager Tom Barwin will engage with residents and businesses as he attempts to brainstorm the best way to create renewed energy in Five Points Park.

Sarasota
News

Forget bringing back benches. The city is embarking on an even more ambitious quest to inject activity into Five Points Park.

Officials don’t know much about the scope of changes at this point. City Manager Tom Barwin is interested in experimenting, though, and during the past six months, he’s spoken openly about his desire to create more energy in the downtown public space.

On Monday, the City Commission authorized Barwin and staff to engage in that experimentation at their discretion. Barwin said he would begin consulting with residents and businesses regarding potential changes, at which point the city will try out ways of activating the park.

It likely means benches will return to Five Points, nearly five years after the commission removed them in an attempt to combat issues associated with gatherings of homeless individuals. Citizens have campaigned to bring seating back this year, arguing the policy has been ineffective.

More than that, however, it signals a growing change in the city’s approach to operating parks. Budget cuts have led to the city doing the bare minimum to maintain its parks — basically just mowing their grass, according to public works General Manager Todd Kucharski.

Barwin said the city wants to refocus its parks and recreation services. Vice Mayor Suzanne Atwell said the city has been working reactively when it comes to managing parks, and approving the changes at Five Points was a step in a new, better direction.

Snowed Over

This isn’t the city’s first effort to energize Five Points Park. This summer, the city issued a temporary vending permit to the Baltimore Snowball Factory, a test to see how vending in the park might work.

The experiment lasted just three weekends. Baltimore Snowball Factory owner Eric Garfield thinks it’s possible to create a lively atmosphere in the park, but he felt he was facing a challenge when he set up shop at Five Points.

“The park was not crowded when I was there,” Garfield said. “The largest population of people in and around the park seemed to be homeless people.”

Commissioner Susan Chapman said Monday a more robust recreation program is needed for city parks to thrive. If a sufficient level of activity were created in the park, Chapman said, the gatherings associated with illicit behavior would move.

“Whenever there’s an activity in Five Points Park, there’s not a gathering of people misbehaving,” Chapman said.

Based on Garfield’s experience, just one vendor might not be enough. As for his advice for how a vendor can thrive at the park?

“That’s a tough one,” Garfield said. “I’ve thought about it myself, and when I couldn’t come up with an answer, that’s when I decided to maybe table it until another time.”

“Putting the benches back is part of the enhancement of the park and what we’re going to be doing over the next few months,” Atwell said. “I see it as a pretty fluid exercise.”

Mayor Willie Shaw also highlighted the city’s evolving stance, arguing that just adding the benches wouldn’t be enough to maximize the potential of the downtown park.

“We’re going to need the flexibility to experiment,” Shaw said. “To just say, ‘this is the box, and everything has to fit inside of this box’ would be limiting us to what we did in 2011.”

Barwin said the changes at Five Points could entail ideas staff hasn’t even thought of yet. One big proposal that has already been floated is allowing a vendor to operate inside of the park. The city experimented with that on a short-term basis with the Baltimore Snowball Factory earlier this year, and Barwin said Starbucks has expressed interest in a space at the park as well.

The changes aren’t just limited to the footprint of Five Points Park. The city is in the process of hiring a parks and recreation director, a new position created in the 2015-16 budget.

That parks and recreation director will face a significant challenge. Even as the city prioritizes active parks, a dedicated source of funding remains scarce. A 2011 city-county agreement withdrew county financial support from nearly all city-owned parks, which has contributed to the declining state of city parks management.

“So often in a fiscal setting, just like (how) arts and physical education gets cut out of so many school budgets when things get tough, parks and recreation has faced that challenge over the decades in many, many communities,” Barwin said. “When times get a little tough, parks and rec is usually one of the first things to face the budget scalpel.”

The city has suggested the creation of a dedicated parks and recreation taxing district as one option to avoid future funding issues. The city’s Parks, Recreation and Environmental Protection board is slated to discuss that funding option at a future meeting, as well as the possibility of creating a conservatory for a more philanthropic effort.

In 2014, Kucharski said the idea had generated positive feedback from residents who were interested in proactive capital reinvestment in city parks. He has bemoaned the city’s inability to create programming in its parks and public facilities — other than the Robert L. Taylor Community Complex, frequently cited as a model to emulate among staff and officials.

"“It really needs a focal point and a leader and perhaps better organization." — Tom Barwin

In addition to identifying funding sources, Barwin believes a parks and recreation manager can benefit the city simply by providing a greater degree of specialized attention to parks. This year, residents have made an active push to preserve urban green space, and the city’s shifting philosophy is partially a response to that effort.

“We think it’s important enough now, based on what I’m hearing from the community and so many folks who love our parks, love being active and outdoors,” Barwin said of the renewed emphasis on parks. “It really needs a focal point and a leader and perhaps better organization.”

The conversation will mostly remain philosophical until the parks and recreation manager is brought on board. The city is currently reviewing submitted resumes and seeks to make a hire by early 2016.

Until then, Five Points will become the testing ground for a new approach to managing parks in Sarasota.

“Most people that come here and live here and desire to live here do so because it’s a delightful community,” Barwin said. “A part of that total mosaic is making sure we have good, quality facilities for people to be active.”