HomeMy WebLinkAboutParks and Rec Advisory Board-Agenda Packets-1/3/1991~~ ~~ city of
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Texas
PARKS AND RECREATION ADVISORY BOARD
REGULAR MEETING
4
JANUARY 3, 1991 L.D. LOCKETT PARK
7:00 P.M. 315 L.D. LOCKETT DRIVE
I. CALL TO ORDER
II. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
III. NEW BUSINESS
A. Discussion and Consideration of a Creative Play Area
B. Discussion and Consideration of Facility Improvements to Football
Field at Colleyville Middle School
IV. OLD BUSINESS
A. Discussion and Consideration of Parking Improvements to City Park
B. Discussion and Consideration of City Park Master Plan
C. Discusssion and Consideration of No Play on Sunday at City Park
D. Discussion and Consideration of Park Ordinances
V. REPORTS
A. Parks and Recreation
B. Parks Board Chairman
C. Other Committees
VI. OTHER CONCERNS
VII. ADJOURNMENT
P.O. BOX 185 COLLEYVILLE, TEXAS 76034 (817) 281-4044
C. Discussion and consideration of master plan of development for
City Park
The draft copy of the City Park Master Plan was not presented to the Park
Board in time to review and make a recommendation. David Tipton, 701
field Street and Tom Chandler, 603 Field Street were present to discuss
the possibility of not allowing league games to be played on Sundays.
Nick Martine recommended that the Athletic Associations be invited to
the next meeting to discuss the issue of no Sunday play. The vote passed
by an "Aye" voice vote.
IV. NEW BUSINESS
A. Discussion and consideration of purchasing bleacher through
the Voluntary Park Fund
NO ACTION TAKEN
B. Discussion and consideration of bathroom facility at City Park
Mary Lou Brieger recommended that port-a-cans be rented for use by the
patrons and participants at City Park during the baseball season. Seconded
by Paul Vigiletti.
AYES: Martin, Brieger, Vigiletti, Mills, Quimby
NOES: NONE
C. Discussion and consideration of tennis courts at Sparger Park
Cheryl Livingston suggested the possibility of building tennis courts
at Sparger Park. The Board suggests that the staff look at the possibility
of a multipurpose and pavilion be erected at the park. NO OFFICIAL ACTION
WAS TAKEN
D. Discussion and consideration of joint project with the City
of Grapevine and School District to provide a natatorium
Dawn Quimby recommended that the City contact the School District and
express interest that the City desires to discuss the possibility of a
joint effort to provide a natatorium. Seconded by Nick Martine.
AYES: Martine, Brieger, Vigiletti, Mills, Quimby
NOES: NONE
E. Discussion and consideration of bimonthly Park Board meetings
and change of meeting days
Discussion to change the official meeting days NO OFFICIAL ACTION TAKEN
PARKS AND RECREATION ADVISORY BOARD
MINUTES
DECEMBER 6, 1990
I. CALL TO ORDER
The regular meeting for the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board was called
to order at 7:00 P.M. on December 6, 1990.
ROLL CALL: Paul Vigiletti, Gail Mills, Dawn Quinby, Nick Martine, Mary
Lou Brieger, Cheryl Livingston, and Chairman Alan Linford were present.
Parks and Recreation Coordinator David Fain was also present. .
II. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Nick Martine moved to approve the November 15, 1990 minutes as submitted.
Mary Lou Brieger seconded the motion. The vote passed by an "Aye" voice
vote.
III. OLD BUSINESS
A. Discussion and consideration of parking lot expansion at City
Park.
Chairman Linford requested that more information be presented to address
the existing parking lot situation as it pertains to congestion and a
more feasible way to adequately park cars. Staff will present a revised
parking plan to the Board at the next regularly scheduled meeting.
B. Discussion and consideration of bond program as it pertains
to parks.
The Board discussed items that could be included in a bond issue: 1.
Land Acquisition 2. Reconstruct City Park, 3. Additional athletic
facilities, 4. Bransford Park Development,
5. Retire L.D. Lockett Park debt. Discussion continued with how much
each project would cost, however no recommendation was proposed as to
specifically what projects or how much would be proposed for parks in
the bond issue. Questions were asked as to what role, if any, would the
Park Board play in the bond proposal process. Mary Lou Brieger moved
that David Fain or Alan Linford draft a memorandum to the Mayor and City
Council addressing the issue that the Park Board serve as part of the
community services subcommittee and blue ribbon committee. Paul Vigiletti
seconded the motion. The vote being:
Ayes: Martine, Brieger, Vigiletti, Mills, Quinby
Nves. None
V. REPORTS
A. David Fain updated the Park Board on the following:
1. Mill Creek Project
2. Voluntary Park Fund
3. Park projects
4. Recreation programs
B. NO CHAIRMAN REPORT
C. Pd0 COMMITTEE REPORT
VI. ADJOURNMENT
Nick Martine moved to adjourn the meeting at 10:00 P.M. Mary Lou Brieger
seconded the motion. THE VOTE PASSED BY AN "AYE" VOICE VOTE
Respectfully Submitted:
David Fain, Par and Recreation Coordinator
APPROVED ON: I ~ ~~ _q ~ ,~~~ ~y- .
T~
Design
Johnny Appleseed of the Swing Set
An architect travels the country building playgrounds
ff's everybody ready out there?" came
the cry. Then the countdown: "Five!
... Four! ... Three! ... Two! ...One!"
And a jubilant roar: "We did it!" In the
glow of a Florida sunset, a herd of scream-
ing children stampeded into Indian Har-
bour Beach's just completed playground
last month and began scrambling over the
turreted fortress of mazes and bridges,
slides and ladders, fire tunnels and sand-
boxes. As the youngsters gamboled,
beaming parents and teachers stood along
the periphery, exchanging handshakes
and hugs.
All of you who are deep into mitten
weather may envy those who are scam-
pering around a Florida playground
dressed in shorts and T shirts this time of
year, but, after all, these folks earned it.
For five days, more than a hundred volun-
teers at Ocean Breeze Elementary School
sawed wood, dug holes, hammered nails
and tightened bolts. Come nightfall, they
still toiled, aided by a fire truck's flood-
lights. At the hub of the commotion, sag-
ging tool belt at waist and diagrams in
hand, was Architect Robert Leathers, 45,
the Johnny Appleseed of the swing set.
Over the past 15 years, Leathers has
helped thousands of volunteers erect
nearly 350 playgrounds in 24 states, rang-
ing from pocket-size parks to a 1'/z-sq.-mi.
recreation area, complete with a 600-seat
amphitheater, in Romulus, N.Y. "The at-
titude is what makes this work," says
Leathers. '`I love to see a whole family-
a grandparent, a parent and achild-
out there working. They've never had
a chance to build something together
like this."
Leathers, whose boyhood passion for
multistory treehouses led him to become
an architect, stumbled into the swing-
and-slide business in 1970, when he
helped build a play area for his children's
school in Ithaca, N.Y. That effort took 15
weekends, bu[ the community spirit en-
gendered by the all-volunteer project ex-
hilarated Leathers so much that he made
it a specialty of his practice. Today six of
his associates work fulltime on designing
and building playgrounds, which general-
ly go up in four or five days and cost any-
where from $2,500 to $45,000, about one-
third the usual price.
Before construction begins, Leathers
holds a Design Day, when he meets with
local residents to solicit their suggestions.
He especially invites children
to submit drawings and wish
lists: castles and mazes are
among the most popular re-
quests. Leathers can be quite
obliging: he built a wooden
Alamo, equipped with an ar-
madillo-shaped drawbridge,
for a Dallas elementary school
and fashioned a crude tele-
phone system out of three-
inch plastic piping for Ham-
ilton. Va. Safety considera-
tions, however, usually force
him to reject water slides,
underground tunnels, bike
racetracks and skateboard ramps.
At Ocean Breeze, requests for a castle
and a space station were approved, but
grownups nixed a plea for a haunted
house lest it attract graffiti, After the dia-
grams were drawn up, community leaders
received from Leathers' firm spiral-bound
manuals detailing exactly what lumber
and tools were needed. Some critics have
voiced concern about the safety of volun-
teer-built playgrounds, but Leathers in-
sists only the best materials are used and
the workers are strictly supervised. "One
thing we have learned is that we can't cut
corners," says Leathers. "Playgrounds
have to be tough because kids put them
through such hard use."
Leathers' genius for organization be-
came apparent on the first day of con-
struction, when he roamed everywhere on
the site, calmly answering questions and
giving advice. Teams of workers built the
playground section by section, assembling
the numbered pieces of wood as they
would a giant jigsaw puzzle. Age did not
seem a barrier: Henry Stiles, 71, a retired
maintenance worker, dispensed the tools
collected by volunteers (including 15
rasps, 30 saws and 25 shovels), while a
group of first-graders sanded wood. Tiffa-
ny Greenis, 8, carried trays of apples and
carrots to workers, while her mother
Lynn picked up fresh skills. Said she: "I
came out expecting to do a lit-
tle hammering and ended up
using tools that I still have no
idea what they were."
As the playground slowly
took shape, the pace quick-
ened. Sometimes bad weather
or ebbing enthusiasm can de-
lay the work, but the Ocean
Breeze project was free of such
annoyances. By midafternoon
of the fifth day, Robert
Becker, 26, was delivering a
final batch of sand in a bor-
rowed backhce, while Gary
Craycroft, who had last hung
swings for his baby daughter Penny, now
put them up with her help. Said Penny,
14: "It's been neat. I'll never forget work-
ing at night with the lights on." But
Leathers is out to impress the adults as
much as their children. "They start out as
cynics, but when the countdown begins,
and the kids stream in, they start to cry,"
he says. Leathers assures his clients that
his playgrounds will last at least 25 years,
but the memories are guaranteed for a
lifetime. -ByAnastasla Toufexis.
Reported by 5/dney Urquhart//lhaca and
Don Wlnlwsf-/Ind/an //ar~-on•8esch
TIME. DECEMBER l5, 1986 91
Robert Leathers
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PARENTS' GUIDE
FA M 1 LY P O R T R A I T
BY UONNA It ARRISON
MaNiag a Difference
el community bu~IJS a playground-in f r daya~.
've discovered that being a parent
doesn't start when the doctor hands
you that squirming little bundle with
the squashed-in face. Oh no! Real par-
enthood begins when you volunteer to
bake cookies, wash cars, tote kids, and,
well, you get the idea. A while back, I
became a "real parent." I spotted a notice
in our local paper that cried out to me ,
the beaming new parent: VOLUN"PEERS
tiOll(~11"I' Oll'I' 1~Of2 CUht(`tUNI"fY-RUll:l'
I'LAY(;ItUUNI). b1EE'f A'l"f'U1VN HALL NEX"l'
"l'l1UKSllAY.
Here's my chance to get this parenting
business off to a good start, I thought. I
could certainly help put together a few
new swings and slides. Sure, no problem.
At that first meeting, one of the proj-
ect coordinators, asuper-organized
type-you know, the kind of woman who
arranges her spice rack alphabetically-
quickly outlined the project. No fooling
around; this was serious business. She
wasn't talking about replacing some old
equipment. Her ideas were more on the
line of a nuni-Disneyland. Talk about Mis-
sion Impossible! We had a year to
scrounge up lots of cash, round up 1,200
volunteer builders, beg and borrow tools
and other equipment (including mysteri-
ous things like boom augers, used to dig
holes for telephone poles), and buy or
solicit all the lumber, bolts, tires, chains,
and other materials needed to build an
over-15,000-square-foot playground.
Oh, and by the way, we'd build this play-
ground in just about four days.
I surreptitiously glanced around the
room and was relieved to see that every-
one was pretty flabbergasted. "Whoa!" I
thought, "Did I walk into the wrong
meeting!" But before I had a chance to
slip out the door, the coordinator pulled
out the big guns, a slide show of abso-
lutely beautiful playgrounds built by
other towns. "That did it. Only a really
"bad" parent would walk out now, I
decided. In my sturuned state I joined the
public relations committee. Other com-
mittees formed, too: volunteer recruit-
ment, children's materials, child care,
tools, foremen, fund-raising, graphic
arts, and (everyone's favorite) food.
emernber the playgrounds you
knew as a kid? You probably ran
amok on the swings, slides, and,
maybe a seesaw, all nicely rooted irn an
asphalt surface. It didn't exactly spark
the imagination and almost ahvays guar-
anteed scraped knees. In the late IJGOs,
a few architects decided that play-
grounds should be more than places to
burn off excess energy. They em~isioned
"adventure playgrounds" and created
fantasy envirorurnents. For example, a
play space in Texas features a maze of
wooden climbing structures that encour-
ages children to explore different routes
through the playground. Arnother play-
ground is made of nothing but old tires.
For our project we chose to dance to
the tune of a designner known as the play-
ground "Pied Piper": Ithaca, New York-
based architect, Robert Leathers.
Leathers has designed more than 30U
children's play spaces all over the world.
He even created a climbing structure for
the pandas at the National Zoo in Wash-
ington, U.C.
Leathers, who charges a mininal fee,
provides the design and supervision. Ilis
users' manual, a rather fat, ttnree-ring
binder, is full of complete, step-by-step,
realistic suggestions, gleaned from his
experience on hwndreds of projects. It
gets you from design day, when Leathers
puts together his first sketches from the
kids' suggestions, to construction week-
end, the frenzied four and a half days
when the playground finally goes up. And
it includes the all-important issue of long-
term maintenance.
Leathers designs playl,~ro(mds for chil-
dren and parents that provide for
safety without sacrificing fun. His multi-
level wooden structures, with their sig-
nature mazes and turrets, feature
interconnecting tunnels, ramps, bridges,
ladders, overhead rings, slidirng poles,
slides, fire swings, and balance beams,
which encourage active and inaginative
S 5 [' G 3 G PHOTO BY JO4v Hnac~isov S E P T F. ~t R E R 1 0 8 8
•--
P .E ~.: ~ GUIDE
FAMILY PORTRAIT
play. There are also quiet spots for read-
ing orjust daydreaming.
Although a Leathers' playground has
an unmistakable style, we found out how
unique each of his designs is when he vis-
ited us on design day. At dawn, coffee
cups in hand, committee members met
with Leathers at the site of our old play-
ground. For the rest of the day, we tried
to match Leathers' lightning-speed pace
as he sketched his way through our grade
schools. As Leathers swiftly sketched
the children's suggestions, which
included dragons, train stations, and
mazes, a playground began to take
shape.
The children's input didn't end on
design day. They were consulted every
step of the way. After all, this was to be
their playground. A children's comnttee
advised the core committee, mailed
thank-you notes to donors, marched in a
parade, put together their own newspa-
per, and buried a time capsule. On con-
struction weekend, toddlers washed
tires and sanded wood while older kids
worked alongside their parents.
As we finalized the plans, we set our
budget at $60,000. That amount seemed
incredible, but it would cost us three
times that if we didn't build it ourselves.
Bathers suggested conducting as
many small fund-raising events as
possible. That way the word would
get out to more people. So that was what
we did. The money came in so slowly-
but come in it did-in penny, nickel, and
dime amounts from kids and thousand-
dollar checks from corporations. Fund-
raisers included Tupperware parties;
T-shirt, toy, children's clothing, and bal-
loonsales; and a benefit at a local cinema.
The kids collected pennies and tried to
cover a gym floor with them. Besides
these smaller money-raisers, we did try
one big event: Our auction, which raised
more than $10,000 alone, featured a bas-
ketball signed by the Boston Celtics.
As public relations chairman, my task
was to get the word out to raise the
money and recruit the volunteers. Most
of our PR was directed at schools. We
buried teachers,staff, anti students in a
blizzard of fund-raiser reminders, gen-
eral-information fliers, and volunteer
SSI'(; :l ii
he children were
consulted every step of
the way.
sign-up sheets. One member of my com-
mitteetook care of issuing monthly press
releases to newsletters of various orga-
nizations: church groups, the PTA, day-
care centers, senior-citizen groups,
arts-and-crafts organizations, garden
clubs, and youth groups. We announced
all events in our local, neighboring, and
regional papers. Our local cable station
gladly taped and broadcast our fund-rais-
ing events.Ahigh-school art student reg-
ularly redecorated a local merchant's
window. We even built a float for our
community's annual Patriots' Day
parade. And we handed out fliers at all
public events. I guess we made a nui-
sance of ourselves, but it worked.
ast year, just as school ended, con-
struction began. From my bed-
room, only a block from the site, I
heard the drone of bulldozers at dawn.
By the time I got a cup of coffee and
ambled over to the grounds, the place
was alive with volunteers and heavy
equipment. We had recruited 1,200 vol-
unteers-Marines, Girl Scouts, grand-
parents, carpenters, electricians,
moms, and dads. Many of the town's
civic organizations and businesses sent
their employees to pitch in. Some people
stayed for a few hours; some worked all
day and into the night.
No matter how long people stayed,
they were entitled to free meals and free
child care. The breakfasts, lunches, and
dinners for the entire construction period
were donated. One evening, a local res-
taurant doled out 600 chicken dinners.
For breakfast, a farm stand donated
more than 100 gallons offresh-squeezed
orange juice. My family ate every meal
on site for five days. We wanted the
gravy train to go on and on.
While moms and dads were swinging
hammers, the tots whooped it up at the
day-care center. We offered child care
daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Children
enjoyed indoor and outdoor play areas,
quiet spaces, a movie room, and live per-
formances-a puppet show, a magic
workshop, sing-alongs-courtesy of
local entertainers. Given the child-care
shortage in our area, many parents
begged us to make the care permanent.
On the second day of construction, I
finally had time to slip out of my PR role
and into jeans for some "real" work. I
picked up a hammer and drove my first
nail. Unfortunately, my hand blistered
quickly, but a Red Cross volunteer, on
site all five days, patched me up.
Four and a half days after we started
construction, we had a playground. And
what a playground! We built six slides,
including a spiral one (tny husband's pride
and joy), a dragon, a train station, a
rocket slop, a fire fighters' pole, swing-
ingbalance beams (my pride and joy), pic-
nic tabies, and trash bins-all put
together by a bunch of rookies, and all
from scratch.
Since that day, volunteers called "The
Friends of the Playground" have handled
the rigorous upkeep program. So far,
maintenance has been routine. Many of
the volunteer builders regularly check
out their "spot"-the corner they ham-
mered or the ramp they bolted. I'm no
longer stunned to see people stroll
through the play area and pick up stray
litter. Everyone does it.
After a year of hard, sometimes
exasperating (but fun) work, some
committee members experienced
post-playground depression. I saw
something in the paper the other day
about sprucing up the rest rooms in the
park. Let's see... my daughter is soon to
be potty trained. If anyone comes up with
a slide show of attractive community-
builtrest rooms, I'll be hooked.
Donna Harrison is a marketing writer and
motherojtwo, living in Lexington, Massachu-
setts. Family Portrait is a regular column
written by Sesame Street Parents' Guide
readers.
For information onstarting acommunity-built
playground, turn to Extending This Issue.
8EPTEMBER t989
._,_ .......-T,- .~._-~~... _
------ - -
Texas
MEMORANDUM
DATE: January 4, 1991
T0: All Park Board Members
FROM : Da vi d Fa i n ~..
SUBJECT: 1. Map to Playground
2. Park and Recreation Roundtables
Enclosed is a map to the playground site in Keller.
If you are interested in attending a Parks and Recreation Roundtable
on 1-08-91 let me know. I plan to attend, and perhaps could carpool
with any interested individual.
P.O. BOX 185 COLLEYVILLE, TEXAS 76034 (817) 281-4044
N
T
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