From swamps to star-gazing and scarlet macaws, BREC’s (Recreation and Park Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge) award-winning park system offers an astounding diversity of experiences. Agency is currently working with BREC to imagine the next ten years of the park system, which spans more than 6,568 acres and includes 175 parks, 56 recreation centers, 3,350 acres of conservation land, and 18 special facilities. BREC’s system has won the prestigious National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) Gold Medal three times, the top honor conveyed by the NRPA to recognize the #1 park system in the county.
How does a gold-medal park system stay at the top? “Imagine Your Parks 3” is a planning process that charts an action plan for the next decade, with equity as an underlying focus. Agency has been working with BREC and the community to define what equity means. Community and staff input shows that equity for BREC encompasses many themes: priority investment locations, acknowledging history, welcoming and accessible design strategies, specialized recreation programming, community voice, and inclusive operations.
With 140 days over 90°F in 2023 and 21% of all BREC buildings located within 100-year floodplains, resilience is another key topic for the parish. Parks serve as critical resilient infrastructure, and the increasing regularity of flooding and rising summer temperatures today put the system under even more pressure to address the needs of the broader community. The planning process will identify how to create cooler parks that act as natural air conditioning to counteract the urban heat island effect, as well as identify new stormwater strategies for parks to reduce flood risk downstream.
The planning process is currently wrapping up the visioning phase, which has resulted in five key principles: Welcoming Everyone, Connected People, Connected Places, Connected Environment, and Moving Forward Sustainably. These principles reflect input from thousands of community members who have shared feedback through a broad range of engagement opportunities: a statistically valid survey, door-to-door canvassing, dozens of pop-up engagement events, stakeholder focus groups, interactive community workshops, online surveys, and beyond.
The Agency team includes CPEX, Octagon Media, Spackman Mossop Michaels, HR&A, and ETC.
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