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Recreation is taking new direction
By LISA GREENE, Times Staff Writer
People aren't just interested in Little League and youth soccer. People want cricket. Golf. A BMX bike track. Skate parks. Equestrian trails. Warren even heard from a company pushing a "hydrostadium," an artificial whitewater rafting structure that sounds both huge and costly. Warren told the company to try Busch Gardens or Disney World. But the county is exploring several other ways it might provide land, funding or other involvement in new recreation programs. Warren laid out a list of options Tuesday for commissioners, who are expected to vote on a plan April 16. "There's a need that's driving this," Warren said. "Once your philosophy changes a little bit and you think, "Maybe we could serve more people,' the floodgates have literally opened . . . In the past, you just didn't talk about that with the county." For years, the county concentrated on buying and maintaining land for parks, from the Pinellas Trail to Fort De Soto, and left active recreation programs to the cities. But the county is getting younger, and more residents of unincorporated areas complain of having to drive farther and pay more to let their children play soccer. One such group is the Seminole Junior Warhawks. Some 700 children play baseball or soccer at the Warhawks' fields on 125th Street N, on county-owned land next to Walsingham Park. The nonprofit group has run the program for decades, but Warhawks parents said Tuesday they're hoping for some help from the county. "We'd like to see our kids play on the same kinds of fields that kids in the cities play on," said Steve Siesel, a Warhawks board member whose four children play sports there. Siesel told commissioners that investing in recreation for children now means spending less on prisons and programs for troubled youth later. Warhawks parent Maggie Jewett said the group has to keep recruiting volunteers as children grow up and leave the program. Just keeping the fire ants off the fields is a challenge, she said. Since the Warhawks fields and the nearby Cross Bayou Little League fields adjoin county parks, Warren has suggested that county parks personnel could provide some maintenance help at little cost to the county. Other projects are more ambitious. County officials are discussing putting a public golf course or a sports complex, one large enough to draw tournaments and tourists to Pinellas, on the closed Toytown landfill. The 270-acre site also could become at least a temporary home to a BMX bike track. The limiting factor: cost. The county has a long list of ideas. Commissioners say they want to do more but will have to fit new programs into a tight county budget. "The challenge is to figure out how to pay for it," said Commissioner Susan Latvala. One answer is joint projects -- working with cities and nonprofit groups on new facilities and maintaining existing ones. For example, Pinellas is talking to Dunedin about helping to renovate the city's community center if the city would agree to let all county residents use it. Warren also has met with Largo officials about a partnership to build a skate park in the county's Taylor Park. "A lot of the municipal recreation departments started very small," Warren said. "It's an evolution. You don't just wake up and be a huge recreation department."
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
