When families want to spend time together, celebrate a happy occasion or just blow off some steam, they often look to their community’s parks and recreational activities. Georgia’s cities are investing in infrastructure that provides these facilities and services in creative ways—and the payoff is rewarding for both residents and city leaders.
In March 2020, the city of Dunwoody’s parks department staff started working from home due to the pandemic. That left Recreation Program Supervisor Rachel Waldron facing a big question: “How do we still engage with people without physically being present, like we’re used to doing?”
The answer, Waldron and her counterparts would learn, is that there are many ways for parks to engage virtually. In fact, before the year was over, Dunwoody would win an award from the Georgia Recreation and Park Association for one of its campaigns.
That effort involved transforming their planned one-day senior health and fitness event at their annex into an entire community outreach project. They partnered with a local assisted living facility, where they offered exercise classes weekly and connected about 100 pen pals with the facility’s residents to keep them engaged with the outside world.
“It’s been really cool to see us and other agencies get really creative,” Waldron said.
The pandemic pushed many departments to think about park boundaries differently. The Athens-Clarke County Leisure Services Department did just that by moving to virtual and distanced leisure services amid quarantines. The area’s Sandy Creek Nature Center’s annual Snake Day moved to video. The Lyndon House Arts Center created contemporary art kits for children to use at home. Athens Creative Theatre offered online classes and productions.
Cathy Padgett, the department’s community relations specialist, said when Athens residents would get disappointed after calling to ask if a playground was open, staff members were able to redirect them to the alternative activities in which the city had invested.
“People really appreciated it, and it kept them engaged, and it kept them active,” said Padgett. “And I think maybe to some degree, maybe being locked up made people value their parks even more — because they couldn’t get to them.”
Now that vaccines are available, Acworth is seeing more people return to Logan Farm Park after it was closed last year.
The park, whose features include trails, a half-acre pond and an inclusive playground, was part of the city’s redevelopment of its downtown area that began in the late 1990s.
James Albright, Acworth’s parks, recreation and community resource director, said the investment was important because in addition to being a family-friendly place, it also generates regular traffic to the community. “It’s taken 20 years to get there, but we’ve assembled close to 140 acres that is Logan Farm Park, and now we have restaurants that connect to it, we have cultural arts facilities, we have outdoor interpretive history areas,” Albright said. “So really, it was the synergy that brought everything together from an economic development perspective.”
Another draw to the park is lots of space for walking, running and cycling.
Like park infrastructure, bike lanes are a significant investment area for cities. Elliott Caldwell, Executive Director of Georgia Bikes, calls safe bike lanes a “crucial part of transportation infrastructure.” Without them, people who don’t own a car or live near transit services may have trouble getting to vital locations such as work, school or government institutions.
“No matter where you go in the state, I think people want to ride bikes,” Caldwell said. “A lot of the polling that we’ve done over the years has really indicated that people not only want a bicycle as a part of their transportation and recreation, but they’re also willing to put a small bit of their city or county budget towards building bike infrastructure.”
The importance of bike lanes was underscored when the pandemic forced many essential workers to find new ways to get to work after changes in their transit routes, Caldwell said. Biking allowed people to commute alone, outside and on their own schedule. At a tense time when many gyms were closed, children weren’t getting recess time and screens were becoming increasingly dominant, biking also helped provide families with a physical and mental health reset.
Many Georgia cities have invested in such infrastructure over the years. Columbus has the Dragonfly Trail, a multi-use 11-mile stretch that weaves alongside former rail lines. The League of American Bicyclists has recognized Columbus as a bicycle-friendly community, along with 11 other jurisdictions in the state, including Atlanta, Savannah and Carrollton.
Cities looking to start building bike infrastructure into their planning can start by conducting a needs assessment for people who are already biking in the area, Caldwell said. They can also start small by simply bringing bike education into local schools or starting a bike-share program.
“Some of the best planners who work on bike-pedestrian active transportation issues, they’ll always say: ‘Focus on the people, bit of their city or county budget towards building bike infrastructure.”
The importance of bike lanes was underscored when the pandemic forced many essential workers to find new ways to get to work after changes in their transit routes, Caldwell said. Biking allowed people to commute alone, outside and on their own schedule. At a tense time when many gyms were closed, children weren’t getting recess time and screens were becoming increasingly dominant, biking also helped provide families with a physical and mental health reset.
Many Georgia cities have invested in such infrastructure over the years. Columbus has the Dragonfly don’t just focus automatically on the infrastructure. Really center people and their needs in the conversations when you’re starting on these issues.’”
Caldwell hopes they begin by contacting Georgia Bikes.
“I really want cities and communities to know that if they’re interested in bikes, come talk to us,” Caldwell said. “We will help find resources and help make those connections. That’s one of our primary roles in the state.”
This story originally appeared in the May/June 2021 edition of Georgia’s Cities magazine.