Residents share ideas to bring community together at city parks

Dozens of residents joined project leaders Wednesday evening for a lively discussion about the future of Palm Springs’ parks.

Driving the news: More than three dozen people gathered for the second community workshop, held at the James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center, to consider the update of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan.

At issue: The city’s master plan is to be used as a guide of priorities. The workshops aren’t meant to design a new park but rather for residents to share their thoughts about what parks in the city should look like and what they should have.

By the numbers: Project team members revealed new data they uncovered during their initial analysis, which found that only 34% of city residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park. When looking at a map with the data, the central part of town is almost entirely dark green, meaning residents there live within a five-minute walk from the nearest park. In the city’s northern section, only people in neighborhoods near Victoria and Desert Highland Parks have that kind of access.

• Christian Rodriguez Ceja, with Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), the project team, said looking at the map makes it impossible to ignore the disparity that exists in the city.

Big ideas: The ideas started flowing once attendees were asked about what they wished they had in their parks. People of all ages came up with ways to fill the voids in their community, from a roller rink and more concerts in the park to mental health and financial literacy classes.

• One of the most common desires was a splash pad or a swimming pool for the north part of town so that residents could get a break from the heat during the summer.
  
• Patricia Johnson said she wished there were organized family days or days for men’s and women’s groups to get together and be in the community.

In addition: Others spoke up about maintenance issues in the parks, and some felt there was a lack of communication between the Parks and Recreation Department and other city departments that handle landscaping.

Learning from the past: Many longtime residents looked to the past for ideas while coming up with new ideas. A retired teacher, Linda Gray, said she used to teach sewing and cooking at the James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center. 

• “We’d cook soul food with the kids, sew their outfits and dashikis for the pageant,” she said. However, Gray noted that those diverse options for activities had stopped being offered around 10 years ago.

What to watch for: The next community workshop will be held on June 26 at Demuth Park.

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