SAN MARCOS PARKS & RECREATION
The city of San Marcos Parks & Recreation department is seeking community engagement for the final phase of their vision plans for Riverfront Parks and the Eastside Regional Park. The department has hosted sev- en public meetings during phase one and four meetings during phase two where citizens gave feedback and asked questions about the proposed developments.
The city of San Marcos has contracted with Halff, a full-service infrastructure consulting firm, to provide professional planning and design services for the vision plans. The Riverfront Parks include Plaza Park, Veramendi Park, Bicentennial Park, Children’s Park, William & Elanor Crook Park, Ramon Luicio Park and Rio Vista Park. The Eastside Regional Park will be a new development located on what was previously the Quail Creek Country Club. The vision plans will act as a visionary framework to guide the future development of the parks, which includes programming, facilities, features, general layout, funding requirements and a potential implementation strategy. The goals stated on the city website include assessing community preferences and identifying characteristics and factors that will shape the park, evaluate opportunities and constraints based on analysis of the project sites, complement goals associated with the 2019 San Marcos Parks, Recreation and Open Space Master plan, create a defined action plan for moving forward with park development, and to build consensus and commitment amongst elected and appointed officials, city staff and the community.
The project started in October of 2024 when the department started site analysis and data collection. November and December of 2024 was the pre-engagement phase. In January and February of this year, the department started phase one of community engagement. This included multiple public open house meetings where community members provided input on the park plans, with a Spanish speaker present at meetings. There were community feedback surveys open to the public from February 12 to March 31. PDFs of the survey results are available on the city’s webpage about the park plans.
Phase 2 began in April with Halff consultants compiling community feedback from phase 1 to generate two concepts for each of the current park plans. Multiple public meetings were held for citizens to review the concepts and offer additional feedback. The final survey closes at midnight on June 15 and will mark the end of Phase 2. The next steps will be the final master plan concept development phase to take place this summer.
At the public meetings for phase 2, there was a feedback poster summarizing suggestions from phase 1. Respondents were asked to prioritize recreational items to be included in the Vision Plan. The most important items include restoration and protection of natural areas, demonstration gardens, open space for free play, birding/nature viewing areas and pavilions and picnic areas. The least important items compiled from feedback surveys included outdoor racquetball, baseball fields, soccer fields, and volleyball.
The Blanco River Village housing community is adjacent to the proposed Eastside Regional Park. At the June 2 public input meeting, there was a place where citizens could write down suggestions on sticky notes. Many of these notes contained pleas for proposed baseball fields to not be near the homes at the Blanco River Village or across the park with homes on Bogie Drive. Other public suggestions include traffic control, a noise ordinance, security and requests for bike trails along the river towards downtown.
The city has two online surveys, one for each park, open for feedback until midnight on Sunday, June 15. The surveys can be found on their website at sanmarcostx.gov/4514/ Riverfront-Parks-Planand- Eastside-Regio, with surveys in both English and Spanish.
