September 2018 - Parks & Recreation - 68

INVESTING IN SOUTH BEND

The Howard Park renovation project includes an elaborate ice trail,
interactive fountain and expanded
event lawn.

The Master Plan
As the fourth largest city in Indiana, South Bend has a population
of more than 101,000 people and
covers a 41.82-square-mile area
located close to the southernmost
bend of the St. Joseph River. Along
with its industrial heritage, South
Bend, home to the University of
Notre Dame, is also renowned for
academic excellence.
Over a 15-year period, the city created a 20-year Comprehensive Plan
that included enhancements to the
parks and trails system, a 5-year Master Plan, as well as various neighborhood development plans. However,
as Perri points out, " 15 years later,
we hadn't seen a lot of evidence of
work being done around any of those
plans, so we wanted to alter that. "
But, before the city could implement its plan, it needed to undergo
an inventory analysis of its parks
system to identify the major capital investments needed throughout
each neighborhood and community. The first step entailed intensive
data collection and analysis, which
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pinpointed South Bend's basic
needs in terms of green space and
amenities. The city enlisted the expertise of GreenPlay, LLC, to employ its Geo Referenced Standards
Amenities Program (GRASPp), a
system that impartially ranks the
quality, condition and ability of every public park in the city to meet
operational and programming
needs. The collected data revealed
specific areas that were underserved and lacked sufficient amenities. The city also worked with
the Trust for Public Land (TPL) to
conduct a ParkScore analysis.
According to Perri, South Bend is
the first city outside of the top 100
cities to request a ParkScore study.
He adds that it wasn't enough just
to know if every area of the city
had a park; it was also important
to ask questions such as: " Is that
park good enough? Does it have the
types of amenities we would expect
it to have, like shade structures on
the playgrounds? " Next, the city's
Innovation and Technology Team
integrated the ParkScore data with

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the GRASP data to provide a more
complete picture of the overall health
of its parks and trails system on a
geographic level, and to help South
Bend identify areas of need and opportunities for economic growth.
The city also sought input from
the public by conducting a statistically valid survey - soliciting online and in-person feedback during
numerous community stakeholder
meetings. Throughout the data
analysis and public input processes, it was evident that social equity
was a key driver of the parks and
trails plan.
" What's interesting about data is
you'll get a look at something that,
perhaps, people don't know themselves, " says Perri. " For example,
if you're asking on a survey: What
would you like to see improved in your
park? People might write: I want a
splashpad. But, what that question
misses is some neighborhoods
don't even have parks. When you
look at the Trust for Public Land
ParkScore and calibrate that data
for accessibility, you might uncover that there is a park nearby, but
this neighborhood can't access it,
because, perhaps, there's a railroad
track in the way, an inaccessible
path or no path at all. " However,
by creating a path from the backend of the park to this neighborhood, it could solve the connectivity problem as opposed to building
a new park. " Having that information helps us make some wise investments that way, " he says.
In 2016, the city teamed with
SmithGroupJJR to work on the
project's conceptual framework, a
process that would take nine months
to complete. " We initially started
out with a high-level planning effort that looked at the whole river
corridor and all the connections
between the assets and the down-

September 2018 - Parks & Recreation

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