Major changes coming to Jacksonville's parks (Springfield: renting, houses, neighborhood)

[riveree]

The sketches are beautiful, but we have to be realistic about it, it's just a vision plan.

The city of Jacksonville has many, many vision plan sketches like this for all different parts of the city. The problem is funding. We'd be lucky to see anything resembling this scope happen in our lifetimes. It's not that it won't ever happen, but until it's funded, it's not happening.

[fsu813]

75 new trees will be planted in Klutho Park next month.

75.

That's a lot of trees.

Details here: CSX RSVP for CSX Trees for Tracks in Jacksonville, FL (http://rsvp.keeponliving.org/jax/ - broken link)

[Keith-n-Jax]

Those plans are very nice,just hope we can getting the funding for it. We need to keep our parks well maintained.

[fsu813]

The parks budget is dipped into by others, regularly, unfortunately.

Jacksonville has the largest urban park system in the U.S............fun fact.

[fsu813]

Actually, it was 100 trees:











More photos & story at www.myspringfield.org

[Dappleganger]

Thank you for posting those beautiful pictures of the new trees and smiling faces who helped get it done!

[fsu813]

As promised, Friendship Fountain renovations begin: With renovation, Jacksonville's Friendship Fountain will fly high again | jacksonville.com


Plus, Jacksonville is ranked by one national magazine as the best city in the US for parks & recreation: Magazine: Jax No. 1 In Parks, Recreation - Jacksonville News Story - WJXT Jacksonville (http://www.news4jax.com/news/24770217/detail.html - broken link)

(notice the few they mentioned in the article are all located in or around downtown and it's unique historic neighbrohoods that surrond it)

[fsquid]

there is a good number of parks here. I think my daughter regularly goes to 3-4 within 5 minutes of our house.

[jsimms3]

Glad Friendship Park is finally being renovated, but I have to STRONGLY disagree that Jax is #1 in the nation for parks. I have explained myself thoroughly on the topic on Metro Jacksonville | Covering Downtown Jacksonville FL, Northeast Florida, Jacksonville Transit, History, Neighborhoods, Photos.

Our park system is the worst that I have personall seen, and local citizens have stepped up and done their part for funding upkeep and planting new trees, etc, but our city completely drops the ball. Cases in point: Boone Park, Klutho/Confederate Park (the Emerald Beltway between downtown and Springfield), Riverside Park, Memorial Park (to a degree), McGirts Park, and the list goes on. When I was growing up, everyone I knew in high school knew of and used the parks for illegal activities because they were run down and nobody paid attention to them (it wasn't until Stockton Park was privately renovated and redone that Ortega kids flocked over to McGirts Park to smoke and drink after school). Boone Park is essentially a pine forest with the shrubs cleared with less than satisfactory tennis courts on one end and a cheap plasticky playground that nobody uses on the other end (the end close to the Shoppes of Avondale).

The Emerald Necklace and Riverside Park both used to be spectacular parks that people used, and now one is kinda sorta maintained by the residents of Springfield with absolutely no city help or commitment and the other is used by a few events like an art show that I used to volunteer at, but the extent of the renovations once again included a simple plasticky playground that nobody uses.

Bottom line: We have NO great parks or unique parks (but tons that could be great). We have the lowest park budget per capita in the state by a long shot (some metros have per capita park budgets in FL that are 3-4x ours). Northeastern cities have similar per capita budgets for parks and recreation as ours, but also plenty of rich philanthropists to fill the gap. We have people donating (Stockton and Baker Parks in Ortega were completely privately redone and made pretty darn good, and are the most used parks in the city as a result), but not enough people donating because why should they when they don't have the money to keep up maintenance and security and the city does nothing to help.

[fsu813]

Well, jsimms, you are factually incorrect about a number of things in your post.

But thanks for your opinion.