Survey: Jacksonville’s Park System Among Worst In US

[mtraininjax]

http://news.wjct.org/post/survey-jacksonville-s-park-system-among-worst-us

What was once a crown jewel, our park system, is now in the toilet. All the "I'm with Alvin" crowd can now pat themselves on the back for essentially turning their back on what Delaney and Peyton did during their terms. Good to see Mayor Brown leaving soon so that resources can be devoted back to the parks.

Jacksonville's parks are in need of improvement, according to the annual survey by The Trust for Public Land. Jacksonville's ranked among the 10 worst park systems in the nation. Jacksonville came in 68th out of 75 cities in the survey.

Of course the city mouthpiece says its just because Jacksonville is so large, its hard to accommodate all to have access to the parks, excuses, excuses, excuses....

[UNFurbanist]

Here is the link to our full park score.
http://parkscore.tpl.org/city.php?city=Jacksonville

While I agree Mayor Brown did not make funding good public parks enough of a priority I highly doubt a penny pinching conservative like Lenny is going to do much more. I hope I'm proven wrong about that but I don't see parks getting any more money. And the "mouthpiece" did have some kernel of truth in what they said because if you look at the data Jacksonville being such a large area hurts us a lot! If you just singled out the urban core we would probably have scored much better.

[simms3]

^^^If you compared the size and quality of the parks in Jacksonville's urban core, coupled with access, I would still think Jacksonville comes near dead last among major cities of 500,000 or 750,000 or more.

There's not one urban city park in Jax that I think is worth bragging about in any respect.  They are all in absolutely horrible shape, and are embarrassments compared to the parks that are being constructed, maintained, or refurbished in the urban cores of other cities Jacksonville's size.  Most of Jacksonville's parkland is pine forest and requires absolutely no maintenance.  Even as a percentage of city territory, Jacksonville falls short of a lot of cities.

14.1% of the city's land area is parkland.  Probably 50% of the city is still straight up pine forest, so probably at least 25% of that is bought by the city as conservation land and called parkland.

Compare and contrast - 21% of NYC, the densest city in America by far, is parkland, which means most or all of that is urban parkland with high accessibility and costly maintenance needs.  19% of SF is parkland and 22% of DC is parkland.

I still think the list is certainly with flaws, but a city doesn't need a whole fifth of its land area set aside for parks to be great.  Atlanta ranked low (#47) and has only 6% parkland, but I can't think of one park in Atlanta as ill maintained as the best maintained park I can think of in Jacksonville.  Not sure how Atlanta ranks so low with a large set of truly great parks such as Piedmont, Chastain, Centennial, Candler, the Beltline parks, etc etc.  A lot of those parks have large endowments in addition to being recipients of City funds, so perhaps Atlanta City budget is on the smaller end per capita for those parks and it's dinged as a result?

Regardless, I love my hometown, but of any city I have ever ever ever been to, it has the most visibly depressed park/public space I have ever seen, and there are no excuses for that.

[vicupstate]

http://news.wjct.org/post/survey-jacksonville-s-park-system-among-worst-us

What was once a crown jewel, our park system,

HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA

That's a good one.   It's been a long week, I needed a laugh.

[UNFurbanist]

Simm, I have no disagreement with the argument about bad maintenance of the city's parks. I mentioned the land area issue because a big metric in the score is about accessibility which in their definition means being within a half mile walk of a city park. Obviously in sprawling Duval county that's an issue. When you look at their map most of the urban core is light green meaning people are relatively close to some kind of park big or small. However, when you reach the suburbs it turns into a bunch of red. If it was just the urban core we would have gotten good marks for accessibility.

Also, to be fair I think memorial park is very pretty and it's currently undergoing improvements. The river walks are nice, not world class, but nice. The emerald necklace is starting to get some needed TLC from groundwork Jax. Finally, Hemming Park has undergone night and day improvements from a few years ago. I could imagine with the current trajectory Jacksonville could have some awesome urban parks in a couple of years.

[Tacachale]

These metrics are obviously going to make a municipality with a lot of land area look worse, as there's so much more area that's not nearby an easily accessible park. However, our size lets us do things outside the box like the the Preservation Project and the Timucuan Preserve. These are impressive projects for a city of any size, but they're not going to turn up in generic metrics. The issue with our park system is that our more traditional neighborhood parks haven't kept pace with the large parks and preserves. IMO, the next step should have been the Emerald Necklace, which is only now gaining some traction. I don't think that's entirely Alvin Brown's fault, but neither do I believe he was better on the issue than Curry.

[vicupstate]

Minneapolis and St. Paul ranked 1st and 2nd respectively. I was in both cities about 19 months ago, and the validity of that ranking was very evident.

Flying in you could see scores and scores of significant sized parks, many that surrounded lakes.  I visited a few of them and each one was in immaculate condition and offered great amenities. Each was heavily used as well, which explains why M-SP ranks high on fitness and healthy lifestyle rankings too. Biking trails and lanes traverse both cities. 

I'm not certain about St. Paul, but I know the Minneapolis system is run by a Parks and Recreation commission that is apart from the city government itself.  It has it's own elected governing body and it's own taxing authority.  Private sponsorship funding is very substantial as well. Every resident is no more than six blocks from a city park there.

Mayor Peyton ran on a platform to make the nation's biggest park system, it's best park system as well.  A big study was done and it showed JAX spent very little on Parks and Recreation. It also suggested that parks being used as political favor trophies by council members was detrimental and discouraged private funding. 

City council balked at giving up their little re-election fiefdom goodies. Peyton threw in the towel after about two weeks and that was that.
   

[simms3]

It also suggested that parks being used as political favor trophies by council members was detrimental and discouraged private funding. 

City council balked at giving up their little re-election fiefdom goodies. Peyton threw in the towel after about two weeks and that was that.
   

That seems key.  The best little park in Jax is the one in Ortega paid for by Ortega residents.  Most great parks rely on their own endowments.

[RattlerGator]

This is a COMPLETELY bogus ranking of park systems. Acreage, Facilities & Access are the three ways in which they calculate their scores and two of those three factors are very clearly and, worse, quite arbitrarily biased against consolidated cities without any apparent attempt to control for the bias.

This quite evident bias is especially clear when you examine consolidated cities -- Nashville, for instance, sits at 51 and Charlotte sits practically dead last at 74; who honestly believes that ? ? ?

It's freaking absurd, about like our boy simms3 claiming an inability to "think of one park in Atlanta as ill maintained as the best maintained park I can think of in Jacksonville." Thank you for verifying your obvious difficulties in thinking, simms3. I would have thought the fairly compact city of Atlanta (slightly more than one-sixth the size of consolidated Jacksonville) sitting at a decidedly below-average 47 of 75 would have been sufficient for even you to trash this crazy ranking. Apparently not.

The single most impressive nugget I noticed from this ranking was the performance of Virginia Beach. Also a consolidated city, but just one-third the size of Jax, it clearly commits real money toward its park system. That was genuinely impressive and (as a military community, too) a place we probably should take a close look at.

[urbanlibertarian]

COJ can't afford to maintain the parks we currently have.  Can't we prioritize our parks, keep and properly maintain the important ones and sell the rest?

[Adam White]

COJ can't afford to maintain the parks we currently have.  Can't we prioritize our parks, keep and properly maintain the important ones and sell the rest?

The parks are an anti sprawl initiative, and I believe that the majority of them are held in an irrevocable trust called the Florida Land Trust.

And why on earth should we sell parks?

Selling the parks would be a massive mistake - and one that couldn't be undone.

[urbanlibertarian]

COJ needs revenue and owns a lot of real estate it can't afford to maintain.  Selling assets can help improve city finances.

[thelakelander]

COJ can start by selling off a good chunk of the property it owns in downtown and adjacent neighborhoods.

[Tacachale]

There are plenty of ways for COJ to improve its finances without selling of parks. That's a non-starter.

[Know Growth]

Remember too that a great deal of area Public Lands are in fact in state and federal ownership- surplus of these lands unlikely.
I mention this because some might confuse or assume these lands are COJ. Their presence lends to the awareness of rather vast "Park" holdings and are often touted as "Jacksonville" public entity. As well they should.

Some element of COJ lands, management was a factor in the campaign; "Sportsmen For Lenny Curry For Mayor" bumper stickers provided curious campaign memento.