Urban Park Guidelines
We are in the process of developing Urban Park Guidelines that will be amending the Parks Recreation and Open Space (PROS) Plan for Montgomery County.
The Urban Park Guidelines will be used by Staff to prepare recommendations to the Board for parks in community based master plans, park master plans, and park facility plans in urban areas. These guidelines should provide some predictability, consistency, and practicality to urban park recommendations, while allowing Staff and the Board flexibility to respond to changing interests, context of a particular community, demographic projections, and best practices.
Park Staff briefed the Planning Board on June 3, 2010 regarding the preliminary findings and requested Planning Board input and approval for the Objectives, Outreach Strategy Recommendations and the plan schedule.
Staff has begun to formulate a rationale for the pattern, roles, amount, location, design, ownership, funding, and operations of urban parks. During the past two years, Staff has applied this rationale when developing urban park recommendations in several community sector plans (examples: White Flint & Wheaton CBD Sector Plans) and Battery Lane Urban Park.
Purpose of the Guidelines
- To amend the definition of urban parks to better reflect the important role urban parks play in community life.
- To examine how the pattern of urban parks in Montgomery County relate to existing and proposed urban growth areas.
- To propose the types of activities and amenities that are best suited for urban parks to help guide future development and redevelopment of urban parks.
- To explore innovative ways to finance the acquisition of urban parks where dedication is not an option and to explore maintenance and management strategies that are cost-effective and efficient.
- To develop guidelines for determining whether urban open spaces should be owned and managed as public parks or owned and managed by other entities (such as homeowners associations or development districts).
- To consolidate urban park planning and implementation guidelines being developed for community master plans in the PROS Plan for Montgomery County.
The Plan Process
The calendar will be updated as more community meetings and events are planned for this project. Digital copies of the Plan Concepts, Meeting Notes and Planning Board Memo will be listed here when completed.
Date | Time |
Discussion Topic & Meeting Notes | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | ||
| ONGOING | 2010 Department of Parks inter-agency meetings on draft objectives and issues | |
June 3 |
Plan Objectives, Outreach Strategy Recommendations, and Schedule Planning Board Breifing. Staff memorandum (.PDF, 1.5MB) - located in the June 3, 2010. Item #10 . PowerPoint presentation (.PDF, 1.5MB) | M-NCPPC Montgomery Regional Office (MRO) 8787 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910 |
2011 |
||
ONGOING |
Community outreach and inter-agency collaboration | |
SPRING |
Publish Draft Urban Park Guidelines for public review | |
SUMMER |
Public Hearing and Planning Board Approval | |
| TBD | Publish Approved Urban Park Guidelines |
Contact
If you have additional questions, please contact the project manager.
Brooke Farquhar
Brooke.Farquhar@MontgomeryParks.org
301-650-4388
Last update: March 22, 2011
Montgomery County Department of Parks