The City of Lubbock’s Parks and Recreation department is seeking resident feedback to help shape their new Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Master Plan. The plan will serve as a guide for city leaders to improve area parks and recreational facilities —including major developments to the canyon lakes park system— over the next 10 years.
Residents can leave feedback by completing the community needs surveys the Department has listed on their website, https://www.lubbockparksplan.com/.
“Our goal is to hit at least 15,000 survey responses [around 3% of the community],” said Parks and Recreation public relation coordinator Meegan Honeyman. “But we believe the community really wants to help us out and think we can blow that number out of the water.”
The Parks Department will also hold a community open house at the Civic Center on September 29 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Residents will have the opportunity to see the master plan themselves and to engage in discussion with the plan’s developers and city leaders.
Parks Program Coordinator Kalee Robinson says community input is the most important factor in shaping their parks masterplan.
“We want people to be excited to be a part of the plan and know that these [improvements] are not just dreams, they are actually attainable,” she said. “Our goal is to really make this what the citizens would like to see.”
The survey period for citizen comments will close on November 30. The department will submit the parks masterplan to city council for approval next May 2022.
This will be the first official parks master plan update since 2011. The department made an internal update in 2016, to factor in changes such as Lubbock’s increasing population growth, but an official update will allow the city to apply for specific Texas Parks and Wildlife grants to increase funds for parks projects.
The city has had recent success applying for these grants. Mae Simmons bike trails near Dunbar Historical lake received a $96,200 grant from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department earlier this year.
One of the major initiatives in the parks masterplan is developing the Canyon Lakes parks system —a series of six reservoirs that stretch from Northwest to Southeast Lubbock— improving and connecting them through a trail system. The city hopes to apply for a Texas Parks and Wildlife recreational trails grant once the master plan is adopted.
The Parks department is working with Texas Tech's Department of Landscape and Architecture for this aspect of the plan's development. The goal, when traveling through each park on this potential trail system, Robinson said, is to, “Be able to tell a story of the culture and history of each of those parts of town and make those citizens who have lived there for years and years, proud of where their park system is at.”
