Addressing Safety in Our Parks

Joshua Mason

10 months ago

Envision a better park and work toward that vision.

I am a member of the Savage Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources Commission, participated in the final two River Bend Park Community Engagement sessions, and have spent a lot of time thinking about how to create positive change in our community in the aftermath of the shootings at River Bend Park. These thoughts are my own, but I hope you will consider them alongside your own and consider voicing your support for these potential solutions to City Council: 1. Improve safety; improve the park; invest in our community: Removing the basketball hoops at River Bend Park may have served the short-term purpose of quietening activity at the park and in the surrounding area, but that short-term effect comes at the cost of the overall quality of the park and at the expense of some of the community’s broader goals. The removal also shifts the burden for maintaining safety at the park to a specific few (area youth who previously used the basketball court) when that burden rightfully falls on us all. Let’s not settle for simplistic solutions that diminish our parks and allow divisions to widen. Let’s invest in the future of our community and do the hard work to make River Bend Park a place that every resident of Savage looks forward to visiting and gathering in with their neighbors, friends, and families. 2. Implement design principles that work elsewhere in Savage - separate the basketball hoops from the parking lot: At least six other Savage parks (Eagle Creek Park, Heatherton Ridge Park, Hollywood Park, Loftus Park, O’Connell Park, Summit Pointe Park, and McCann Park) currently feature full court basketball hoops without any widely reported incident. Most of those parks require visitors to walk halfway through the park before reaching the basketball court. This helps insulate basketball players from activities taking place in vehicles and parking lots. Eager basketball players will walk through a park to reach the courts, but individuals hoping to conceal criminal behavior and make a quick escape in their vehicles may prove less likely to make the effort to leave their cars and cross a park. At River Bend Park, the basketball courts are the most accessible amenity, right in the front corner of the park, and sit immediately adjacent to the parking lot. There’s plenty of open space at River Bend Park - let’s find another spot for the basketball court within the park using design principles that currently keep our other basketball courts safe. 3. Commit to “Neighborhood Park” status: The Savage 2040 Comprehensive Plan officially designates River Bend Park as a “Neighborhood Park.” According to this Plan, Neighborhood Parks are meant to be “[e]asily accessible to the neighborhood population with safe walking and biking access utilizing trail networks. Parking facilities limited to a minimum.” Following these principles, we should prioritize neighborhood access to the park over vehicular access. Individuals with cars have the ability to access parks throughout our entire community and beyond. Savage kids on foot and bike do not. If the presence of vehicles played a role in the recent incidents in the park, we should take steps to reduce their presence in the park. I propose eliminating the parking lot at River Bend Park completely (other than for an appropriate number of streetside, accessible parking spots). If this sounds like a radical suggestion, consider the characteristics of a “Neighborhood Park” endorsed by the city and the fact that several other of our Neighborhood Parks with basketball courts have no parking lots whatsoever (Heatherton Ridge Park and Hollywood Park, for example). We’ve done it elsewhere and there is particular need here. We can also create better access to the park by extending the bike path that runs along Glendale Rd. south across Egan Dr. towards the park, and creating community connector trails on the west side of the park connecting Joppa Ave S to Kipling Ave S and on the southeast corner connecting the park to 144th St. Improvements to the park’s access points and interior trails are also needed. The curb ramp in the northwest corner of the park is emblematic of the problem. It’s a corner curb ramp with no connecting path or trail and no marked crosswalk. Like the trail that ends abruptly at home plate of the ball field in the northeast corner of the park, the isolated curb ramp feels only partially conceived and incomplete. The park deserves a properly designed trail loop that reaches all corners of the park, connects all of the community access points, and draws people into the park. 4. Calm the streets around the park: Presumably vehicles speeding in and out of the park and through the surrounding neighborhoods played a significant role in heightening the danger of the recent shootings. Unfortunately, reckless drivers don’t heed reduced speed limit signs, but they may prove susceptible to street design intentionally tailored to slow traffic around the park. We have ample tools at our disposal. We can create pinch points on Joppa Ave S at the north and south ends of the park by extending curbing at the crosswalks to narrow the amount of road space accessible to vehicles passing by the park. This naturally slows cars down and further enhances the goal of ensuring safe access to the park. In addition, we can place medians down the middle of Joppa Ave S similar to the medians that also serve a valuable traffic-calming purpose on the newly reconstructed parts of Glendale Rd. Ultimately, cars will travel by the park and through the surrounding neighborhoods at what ever speeds the roads themselves physically permit, but we can influence driving behavior by changing the amount and shape of the spaces available to vehicles. 5. Make River Bend Park a “Place”: There’s strong demand for additional amenities at River Bend Park. People want to see and be seen by their neighbors and friends engaging in a variety of outdoor activities together. If the courts are moved deeper into the park and the parking lot is removed, there will be ample space for additional park features. Over the last several years, the city has been engaged in the process of implementing a placemaking plan to create “places that enhance the livability of our community, foster community identity and pride, and connect people to the history, culture, and stories of where they live.” (City of Savage Placemaking Plan: December 2021) Let’s make River Bend Park such a place. The River Bend Park Safety Community Engagement Report will include quite a number of ideas for new amenities and features to add to the park. City Council should seriously consider as many of them as possible for this location, even if it requires considerable investment from the city - there is demand and there is need. A response that acknowledges the unequal sacrifice being asked of the area’s basketball court users this summer seems particularly appropriate. Consider the possibility that the park eventually reopens the basketball courts but the young people who once loved to use them no longer feel welcome in the park and never return. An expression of appreciation and a direct community-wide invitation to reinhabit River Bend Park would seem to be necessary first steps in avoiding such a situation. I suggest making the relocated basketball hoops at River Bend Park a place in and of themselves by commissioning a mural selected and painted by community youth volunteers on the surface of the basketball court (check out the basketball court mural unveiled at Phelps Park in Minneapolis last year for an idea of what this could look like). Hopefully, granting our young people the autonomy to direct and participate in such a community-sponsored project will help create a sense of inclusion, ownership, and pride that will further conduce to the safety of the park and the health of our overall community. Rather than reacting in fear, diminishing our parks, and weakening our community, let’s envision the community and the park that we want for Savage and take the hard, but necessary steps to make it real.

0 comment

0

Anon Y Mous

11 months ago

Reconfigure the park

1 Make park attractive to adults. Flower garden with seats and pathways where the court and the parking lot are (remove that completely). 2. Break up line of vision into the park with shade plantings. Esp around the tot lot which is largely unusable anyway because it's out in full sun. 3. Move court to the SE corner, screen it a little while maintaining ability to police. 4. Pickleball and other "white sports" ideas are not acceptable: don't dedicate a public park to a limited use which very few would make use of, with the deliberate purpose of discouraging THOSE PEOPLE. 5. More transparency from the Police. Shallow, vague assurances that there's no furhter threat just allow rumor and fear to spread. You need to update with meaningful information. It would sure mean more to me than constantly passing parked cops guarding an empty park on my way to my home. As near as the public can tell, your investigation stopped dead weeks ago. 5. Aggressively address the racist attitude premised on the idea that THOSE people from ACROSS 42 (the tracks?) should stay in THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOOD, and that WINFIELD should police THEM. "They" use the same schools, streets, stores as Riverbend residents use; they are neighbors! Social media posts keep bringing up incidents from years ago (like the last time the hoops were removed) as justification that the problem is THAT group of black children. Pretty sure it's not the same group of kids, LOL. FWIW, I have lived in Riverbend 30+ years and pass that park several times on a daily basis. Although I consider groups of teen boys an inherent behavioral risk, I have never see any behavior from thst group threatening to other park users or neighborhood. Those kids stay on the court area and keep to themselves.

2 comments

0

Rose

11 months ago

Community outreach, liaisons put hoops up and down and encourage play during specific time frames, so those outside of players now monitorin

Encourage play with supervision

0 comment

0

Rose

11 months ago

Put up cameras and signage park is being monitored, put up signage “only one way in/out” by hoops and in parking lot and shelter,

Cameras

1 comment

2

Kathy Peterson

11 months ago

We need multiple solutions for River Bend

First, the park needs both video (camera) visibility / monitoring to reduce the behaviors of a few bad actors who are attracted to the hoop environment - essentially this was how England finally stopped the "troubles" when miscreants knew they would be caught on film and prosecuted. Second, the park is huge and would benefit from other activities - gardens, dog park, pickleball, and other popular activities that would draw a wide range of residents to the park and provide "on the ground" visibility.

0 comment

0

Addressing Safety in Our Parks

How can the City improve the safety at River Bend Park so everyone can gather, play and feel safe at the park?

Envision a better park and work toward that vision.

Reconfigure the park

Community outreach, liaisons put hoops up and down and encourage play during specific time frames, so those outside of players now monitorin

Put up cameras and signage park is being monitored, put up signage “only one way in/out” by hoops and in parking lot and shelter,

We need multiple solutions for River Bend

Who's Listening

Key Dates

Q & A

Documents