By Ray Gronberg
gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648
DURHAM -- City Council members on Thursday lined up behind the idea that Durham's parks program needs two more recreation centers, one in the southern part of city and another in the northern or eastern part.
But they and administrators stopped well short during a special work session of setting any kind of timeline for the development of those facilities, and conceded that answers about how to finance them are going to be a while in coming.
Council members urged the Parks and Recreation Department staff to seek partnerships with the Durham Public Schools, churches and other groups that can help address space needs or otherwise augment the city's programs.
"On a scale of one to 10, 10 being optimum, we rank about a four in the cooperative-ventures area," Councilman Eugene Brown said. "Other cities have done a better job of that."
Thursday's work session, organized by City Manager Tom Bonfield, was supposed to give administrators a clearer idea of whether the council still supports the fundamentals of Durham's 6-year-old parks master plan.
That document called for the construction of four recreation centers on the edges of the city, a script the city didn't follow.
Instead, in recent years it's put money into the development of a full-fledged recreation center at Walltown Park on Club Boulevard, and in the conversion of the old Holton Middle School on Driver Street into a combination rec center, health clinic and vocational school.
Council members agreed that the Holton and Walltown projects will count as two of the centers the 2003 parks master plan called for, even if they aren't in the locations the plan suggested.
That left open the question of whether members would stand behind the idea of going ahead someday with the other two. In various ways, Brown, Councilman Mike Woodard, Mayor Bill Bell and other council members signaled that they would.
Woodard said it's clear to him that one should go in south Durham, much of which is more than a two-mile drive from the city's existing rec centers. As for the other, he said while it likely belongs in the north or east, he's "happy to let the data drive" the ultimate placement. He also noted that the thousands of homes going up on the edges of east Durham are creating demand for services there.
Bell agreed, and pointed out that officials haven't settled on whether the city's major rec centers should include swimming pools. The council is facing pressure from residents to add a pool to the Walltown center, but site and budget constraints may work against it.
Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden said officials should plan facilities with one eye on transit service.
"We need to keep as many cars as possible off our streets, and use our bus system," she said. "That's also part of our comprehensive [land-use] plan, and if we followed that plan better, we'd be in a better place."
Members offered less clarity on the fate of the parks department's smaller neighborhood centers, which typically include meeting rooms but few other facilities.
Bonfield and the parks staff favor phasing them out because staffing and maintaining them is expensive, relative to their size. But elected officials said the facilities and the programs based in them play key roles in several impoverished neighborhoods.
They seemed willing, however, to let the parks staff suggest alternatives, particularly if it can join forces with churches, schools and other organizations to base programs in other places.
Among the people who use the small centers, "some are concerned about the physical building, but most are concerned about the services," said Beth Timson, the parks department's planning director. "We've looked at how we can continue the services."
