Glendale officials hear input on parks

City staffers are starting to weigh input from residents on how to spend $16 million for local parks improvements.

More than 50 people attended the final community meeting Saturday to gather feedback on utilizing development-impact fees, a fund paid into by builders of mixed-use projects in downtown Glendale.

State law mandates the money can only be spent on creating new parks or adding new amenities at existing open spaces, but not replacement equipment or maintenance.

On top of that, the Glendale City Council directed the money be spent in downtown and south Glendale because those areas will be most impacted by the 4,000 or so new residential units coming to the city.

To that end, resident Darryl Ford said there’s a few surface parking lots throughout downtown he thinks could be converted into parks, such as Lot Six at 310 N. Orange St.

“Why do we have surface parking lots when we have giant [parking structures] that are under-utilized or filled with dealership cars?” he said. “We have space. We should use that space.”

Debbie Edwards said she’d like to see an increase in the local monarch butterfly population and, in order to do so, the city would have to plant the insect’s food source: milkweed.

“It could be in a small plot … There could be signs to educate people,” she said. “It would benefit wildlife and it would make a beautiful place for people to meet up and congregate.”

Others in attendance stated having some form of wildlife aspect could be part of new programming for children. However, Community Services and Parks Director Jess Duran said development-impact fees cannot be used to pay for staffing, either.

The idea of establishing more community gardens was also mentioned.

Despite the geographical restrictions on the impact-fee fund, several in attendance had suggestions on how it could be well-spent in northern parts of the city.

Ross Paulson, assistant regional commissioner of the Glendale AYSO chapter, said local youth soccer players could use more fields for play. He said there’s city-owned land adjacent to the Glendale Sports Complex that would be ideal for new fields.

After the meeting, Duran said the 6-acre plot Paulson was talking about would be an appropriate use of the fund.

Duran added his department will review each suggestion from residents in the past three meetings and rank their feasibility.

That list will first head to the Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission sometime in November and its members’ recommendations will go to the City Council, which will have the final say on how impact-fee dollars are spent.

While the downtown and south Glendale areas are the primary targets, Councilman Vartan Gharpetian said council members will review all options when presented with them.

“We’ll put them on a table and look over all of them and see which one is more important and has more priority,” he said.

The development-impact-fee fund has existed for several years and was recently increased by the council. It would typically generate about $1 million annually, but given the flurry of mixed-used development projects, the revenue skyrocketed.

However, with new projects under construction in downtown, there’s little to no land left for the city to acquire and convert into a park.

Gharpetian said one option could be to team up with the Glendale Unified School District and build parks on its campuses.

An example of this would be a soccer field the city shares with Edison Elementary School.

“We can build a park in their yards, they can use it during the day and the community can use it after hours and on the weekends,” Gharpetian said. “That will help us spend less money on acquisition because we don’t have any land. We’re built out.”