Park board continues work on plan

Portland Park Board is continuing to take steps toward completing its five-year plan.

Board members during their meeting Tuesday reviewed results of a survey that was completed by 515 park patrons.

The data show Hudson Family Park is the most used, with 94.5% of respondents indicating they use the facility. Haynes Park was next at 57.9%, followed by Portland Water Park at 54%.

The parks are most used for playgrounds (67.5%) and trails (66.7%). Trails also topped this list of amenities to be added, with 55.9% or respondents listing them as a priority.

The board also discussed the priorities and goals that were set out in the current five-year plan, which expires at the end of the year. Priorities included making improvements to Portland Memorial Park, establishing a “friends of the parks” organization, establishing a coordinating for “third-party” programs in the parks, designating safe routes between parks and key community activity sites, ensuring the qualitys of the appearance and condition of the parks and improving accessibility. Goals were to maintain current facilities, make upgrades when possible and increasing coordination and oversight of programming.

Board members will review the priorities and goals from the 2017-21 plan and discuss which need to be kept and/or modified and suggest any new ones that need to be added.

A full draft of the five-year plan is scheduled to be presented in November. Board members hope to approve the plan in December and submit it to Indiana Department of Natural Resources for approval in January.

Matt Shauver of the city’s parks department provided an update on facilities, noting that new security cameras have been installed at Hudson Family park, Haynes Park and Portland Water Park.

The hope is that the cameras will reduce instances of vandalism and give police evidence to prosecute suspects when vandalism does occur.

Shauver also noted that Blakley’s of Indianapolis visited Portland Water Park and suggested replacement of the pool tile. (Shauver said the facility was originally designed with warm weather tiles, which do not fare well with the freezing and thawing during the winter months.) He said Blakley’s plans to return and replace the tile on one of the pool walls as a prototype to allow the board to decide how to move forward in dealing with the issue. (No timeline or cost was available for the work.)

Other upcoming park maintenance includes replacing some of the bolts on one of the slides at Hudson Family Park and repairing the fountain on the west side of the pond.

The park board was also presented with Portland Water Park statistics for the summer. The facility had 12,251 visitors this year, during which its hours were sometimes limited because of a lack of staff and the facility closed Aug. 15. It brought in $18,128.62 in admission and concessions.

The water park had 10,275 visitors in 2020, when it did not open until July 4 because of the coronavirus pandemic.