If Our Parks Could Talk: Q&A with Mike Calhoon, the Director of Parks
Mike was kind enough to spend 30 minutes with me walking and talking about the process of developing parks and our communities future.
Some communities place value in their community parks; most don’t. In rapidly developing communities there isn’t always space available, due to demand or cost. Residents of Fort Collins are lucky that their community has always found value out of their public spaces. Take a visit to any of these parks and you’ll be sure to see people of all ages enjoying these spaces in their own personal way.
I was interested to learn more about why Fort Collins has so many parks and why they are such an important piece of our community. Mike Calhoon, Director of Parks for Fort Collins, was kind enough to answer some of my questions about: types of parks, park development, public outreach and the future of parks in our community.
Q: How many parks are in town and what are the different types of parks?
A: So, we have seven community parks and forty-three other types of parks… we’ve got things like pocket parks, we have school parks, where we will co-locate next to a school, we’ve got civic parks where there more hardscape like downtown there’s a park called Oak Street Plaza Park right at Oak street and College. So we have a lot of different classifications now that allow us to kind of focus differently when we are designing those parks.
Q: What goes into selecting what type of park goes into a neighborhood?
A: Contextually we look at what does the site already have. You know? So Twin Silos, for instance, our newest community park on the southeast side of town it had Mclullen Creek running through there. So one of the things that was incorporated into that design was a natural water play area in the creek. So you kind of look at what you have. And that site used to be the location of orchards, years ago… so we have three different types of fruit trees down there that are in the orchard that we reconstructed. And its got more of a farm theme with the silos that are there. And then we did hydroponic gardens, vertical gardens. We did hop trellises that we just harvested a month ago and Odell Brewing made into a beer that they released last Wendesday. And we have a big community garden down there. So you just look at the history of the site is, what the physical characteristics of the site is, and then you do a real robust public outreach process.
Q: What does the public outreach process look like?
A: You get the neighbors together, you know with a community park we put out a wide loop to try to get people to give us input. With a neighborhood park, we focus in that neighborhood, so it depends what is important to them. Is pickle ball important to that neighborhood, or is basketball? Because you cant have everything in every park. Community parks have a lot more assets and variety, so you’ll find tennis courts, basketball court, two ball fields, horseshoe pits, shelters, playgrounds, a couple of restrooms, I mean you have all kinds of amenities. But, you can’t do that with only ten acres. And this [City Park], is almost a hundred acres, it’s like ninety eight acres. So, community parks give you more flexibility for your design and the amenities you can put inside of that, but the neighborhood parks are really important also because everybody needs to have that equitable access to green-spaces.
Q: As our community continues to grow, what plans are there for the parks?
A: That master plan I mentioned earlier, it outlines our future development and it also shows some of our level of service gaps. You know where we could add aditional parks. To help close some of those gaps that you’re talking about. We’ve got two more community parks that are on the horizon. Here in about eight years, we should have one at Drake and Ziegler, where Drake kinda turns south and turns into Ziegler, on the east side of the road there’s a fifty five acre parcel there that will be a community park. And then on the northeast side of town, there should be another community park before we’re all done. And then there’s like fifteen more neighborhood parks that are gonna go in.
Residents of Fort Collins really have something special with their portfolio of public outdoor areas. Since 1912, the community has put an emphasis on outdoor spaces with the founding of City Park. Fort Collins has a rich history of designing and building public areas. Parks are the one public entity everyone should agree are important. Nothing helps the communities physical and emotional health like escaping to a beautiful park in their community.
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