Salt Lake City’s first park — Liberty Park — was founded in 1882. A lot has changed since then, so with millions of dollars now going to update the city’s parks, what makes a good park today?
For public lands planner Kira Johnson, it comes down to a simple question.
“Are people actively using it, regularly coming back to it, hanging out there?” she said.
“That's a high-level way of thinking about whether a park is good.”
On the other hand, how the public perceives whether a park is good or not largely depends on what’s available for them to do.
“If the park has pickleball courts, that's a new priority for me,” said East Bench resident Val Hicken.
“Fairmont Park is our go-to place, but it's noisy next to the freeway and I think other parks can keep courts busy.”
Although pickleball might be all the rage these days, no two parks are the same, Johnson said. Something popular on the east side’s Sunnyside Park could be a terrible idea on the west side. Some amenities, while great by themselves, can conflict with other needs.
“This might make some people mad, but pickleball is a good example of that,” she said.
“It's something that people love, and it will always keep a park activated, but it doesn't make sense to put that right smack in the middle of a neighborhood that's surrounded by houses, because those neighbors are going to be so peeved by that dinking sound.”
The public’s taste in parks has changed over time, too.
In years past, Johnson said lush grass and wide open spaces were all the rage. Today, not so much.
“Something that I notice in a lot of the comments that we receive is people don't necessarily want to see wide expanses of turf and are thinking a lot more about water conservation.”
Making parks more accessible is also something today’s urban park planners are thinking about. For cyclist and dad Brandon Patterson, easily getting from one park to another by bike would be a dream.
“I think that it’s really hard in Utah to find parks to go to without a vehicle,” he said.
Once an exercise-focused park user, his preferences have evolved since becoming a parent to parks with more playgrounds.
“It’s nice to find a park where your kids can come and join a sandbox together, play on the slide and have fun together in that environment,” he said.
In 2022 voters approved an $85 million general obligation bond for the city's parks, trails and open spaces. Projects that fall under the scope of the GO bond range from the major construction of a new regional park in the Glendale neighborhood to basic landscaping and playground updates throughout the city.
When it comes to what the future of Salt Lake City’s parks should look like, for Patterson, it’s something that’s “really community-driven.”
“I think it's a place where the surrounding neighbors can come and interact in different ways.”
