When Dublin residents completed the recent National Citizen Survey, the community’s parks and recreation facilities and programs received marks among the highest in the nation.

Among hundreds of communities surveyed nationwide, only one other place gave the recreation centers and facilities in their hometown higher ratings than Dublin residents did. The ratings Dubliners gave their city parks, recreation classes and programs and the availability of paths and walking trails were the third-highest marks in the country.

An important reason Dublin ranks so high is the community has always taken a proactive approach to planning its parks and recreation facilities and programs, a process that will only improve with City Council’s recent approval of Dublin’s first Parks and Recreation Master Plan.

Approved in January, the plan will guide development and programming in those areas for years to come.

The master plan – several years in development and hundreds of pages long – is designed to be a focused, strategic document integrated with Dublin’s 2007 Community Plan (both documents are available at www.dublin.oh.us).  

“Historically, Dublin’s park system has developed through a combination of sound planning, policy-formulated development directives and market awareness,” says Fred Hahn, director of Parks and Open Space. “This has often happened almost intuitively, and when the community was smaller and less complex that approach worked well.”

Now that Dublin has grown to more than 40,000 residents, and the number of parks exceeds 50, a more strategic approach is needed to guide decision-making for the city’s parks and recreation programs.

“When the city was small, you didn’t necessarily have to prioritize projects versus resources,” Hahn says. “When we had only a handful of projects to do, we could do them all. As we have grown as a community, the number of possible projects grows, and the demand on resources becomes more of a challenge.”

The plan details existing parks and recreation resources, policies and programs in the city, and makes recommendations for future strategies and tactics.

“One of the purposes of the plan was to evaluate existing resources, management practices, policies and procedures,” says Matt Earman, director of Recreation Services. “We recognized ways we can become more proactive toward the community’s needs.”

The document helps identify existing community facilities, resources and recreation offerings to help the city recognize what future needs it should provide, Earman says. It addresses topics ranging from land use, history and natural resources to recreation programs and public art.

“The issues identified are ambitious,” Hahn says. “With proper strategies and resources, we should see significant progress as a result of this plan. “

One important result of the process is a closer working relationship between the city’s Parks and Recreation divisions. Because of the types of services each division provides, they have a natural relationship, which has been strengthened through the master plan development.

“The city’s Parks and Recreation divisions already have identified and initiated many collaborative opportunities as a result of this project,” Hahn said.

Many of the issues that had been identified already are in the process of being addressed, Hahn says. For example, the master plan calls for development of management plans for invasive plant species and woodlots. New practices were developed and implemented prior to the plan’s formal approval.

“As we developed the plan, we already were aware of many of the outcomes that needed to result,” Hahn says. “This helped us organize our thoughts and prioritize based on available resources. This is a more pragmatic, less reactionary approach.”

Earman says the plan’s development also helped identify the need for things such as a comprehensive recreation services marketing plan and the benefits of developing relationships with other community groups and organizations. It also helped solidify collaborative efforts between the divisions and will impact future park development and recreation programs, Earman says.