Rejuvenating Neighborhoods and Communities Through Parks—A Guide To Success www.NRPA.org National Recreation and Park Association © 2011 All Rights Reserved 27 Focus Groups • Decide on the specific focus of the information gathering, such as issues about athletic fields or the needs of neighborhood children • Invite individuals who are known to have knowledge and interest about the focus or topic • Follow up and confirm attendance by participants, since the group is much smaller than a public meeting • Focus groups should last no longer than one hour • Prepare four to five appropriate questions and determine their order, such as simplest to most complex, or noncontroversial followed by controversial • Be careful not to allow one or two people to dominate the discussion Stakeholder Meetings • List all the organizations with an interest or stake in this area or neighborhood • Invite those groups to send a representative to this meeting—preferably a member of their leadership • Welcome each one and explain clearly that they have been invited to share the ideas and perceptions of the groups they represent • Once again, focus on general values or outcomes—for example, encouraging healthy young people rather than creating more regulation baseball fields Community Input Is Ongoing – Brook Run Park in DeKalb County, Georgia In 1998, DeKalb County purchased the former 102-acre state hospital and nursing home for the mentally challenged with the intention of developing a major park in the northern area of the county The state of Georgia agreed to sell the property with a number of deed restrictions The restriction with the greatest impact on the site design limited to 30% the amount of land that could be developed Thus, adoption of the master plan relied heavily on the identification of facilities and the prioritization of facilities to be developed The site, inclusive of the hospital, dormitories, and maintenance and office buildings, sat vacant for use by vandals, drug users, and graffiti artists, while the buildings continued deteriorate in the middle of the Dunwoody neighborhood Establishing trust with the community was an essential component of the planning process, and it was enhanced with the creation of a public-private partnership with the Dunwoody Preservation Trust, a community-based nonprofit organization DeKalb County gave $150,000 to the trust to hire a consultant to develop a park master plan that would meet the design restrictions and be supported by the community The public input during the planning process resulted in the following design goals • Create a signature community park with passive recreational and educational opportunities • Develop places for community interaction • Protect, enhance, and restore environmental resources Throughout the discussions, the goal was to build consensus: a common vision for the park master plan During the public work sessions, participants were asked to respond to two questions: What do you want to be able to do at Brook Run Park? and What is a favorite place of yours that you would like Brook Run to resemble? During the planning period another community action group, Mothers for Playgrounds, formed It advocated for including a playground in the first phase of development because there were no well-designed, well-maintained playgrounds in this community Instead, many of the mothers were driving their children to playgrounds in neighboring counties
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