Master Plan PROCESS
The City of Riviera Beach Parks and Recreation Master Plan (PRMP) is a long-range planning document intended to help shape the direction, development and delivery of the City’s parks and recreation facilities and services over the course of the next 10-15 years. Based on a comprehensive planning approach, this plan considers previous planning documents, department goals, existing conditions, and an assessment of needs to provide a framework for the direction of the Vision, recommendations, and prioritization strategies.
This PRMP is the first Comprehensive Parks and Recreation Master Plan undertaken by the City of Riviera Beach Parks and Recreation Department. While Riviera Beach has not had a formal Master Plan, the current state of the Parks and Recreation system presents unique opportunities and challenges. Plans such as this are often undertaken to help address system-wide deficiencies, operational inefficiencies, or years of deferred maintenance. In the City of Riviera Beach, that is not the case, as everything the Parks and Recreation department does, it does very well.
Multiple elements of this plan relate to the City’s desire to improve the quality of life for its residents, while also addressing the population growth and remaining a great hometown. The development of PRMP is based on the acknowledgment that providing excellent parks and recreation facilities and program opportunities for a broader segment of the population will be a critical component of accomplishing the City’s overarching goals.
Summary of findings
Parks play a vital indispensable role in creating healthy, vibrant, and livable cities and communities which are capable of successfully attracting capital, creative talent and cultural assets within an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Over time the functions of parks within the American cultural environment have changed. Today, the recognition that integrated park systems can form the core of successful communities is well documented and understood within the planning profession. Solving more problems through parks systems means that departments are asked to provide an increasingly diverse breadth of recreational facilities, services and programs in order to meet the needs of citizens.
How to Use the System Master Plan
This plan is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide for the planning, acquisition, development and operations of parks, facilities and recreation programs throughout the City. As such, this plan assists users in identifying programming needs and priorities and long range visioning for the provision of parks and recreation facilities and programs.
This document has been developed in a linear process, building upon previous work; beginning with an overview of the existing parks and recreation system, analysis of public needs and priorities, formation of a long-range vision, and lastly a strategic plan for implementation. The following are a short descriptions of each chapter of the System Master Plan:
The purpose of the research presented in this chapter was to gain a thorough understanding of the existing state of the parks, facilities, programs, services and environmental practices of the City of Riviera Beach. At this time, during the development of this master plan, the City manages 9 community parks and 9 neighborhood parks. This chapter takes an in-depth look at the conditions, appearance and functionality of the existing parks and recreation system as a snapshot for analysis.
Building on the information gathered as part of the System Inventory and Analysis, the Riviera Beach Parks and Recreation Master Plan’s team utilized a wide-range of innovative techniques to conduct a comprehensive, City-wide needs and priorities assessment. Techniques utilized are a combination of qualitative and quantitative industry best practices that provide a system of cross checks to determine the community’s top parks and recreation needs an priorities. Unique to this plan is the inclusion of a robust virtual engagement effort in order to provide safe, accessible engagement opportunities for residents across the City.
The Vision for the City of Riviera Beach Parks and Recreation Master Plan was highlighted by comprehensive stakeholder and public participation. The Vision process began by hosting a multi-faceted workshop with sessions dedicated to better understanding the community’s desires for its parks and recreation system.
The results from the workshop combined with the feedback from previous planning phases allowed the community to provide an extensive, detailed Vision for their parks and recreation programs. The following chapter shares the results of this process and also summarizes the Vision sub-systems distilled from that process that collectively represent the comprehensive, long-range Vision for the Riviera Beach Park System.
In order to advance the parks and recreation Vision established by the residents of Riviera Beach, implementation strategies must be defined and priorities established. As the final chapter of this Master Plan, the Recommendations and Implementation includes: estimation of probable cost of the Vision established in Chapter 4; a summary of the Implementation Workshop; capital improvement recommendations; programming, policy and operations recommendations; evaluation of funding sources; phasing recommendations; and priority action items.
Question about the Parks Master Plan please email tbailey@rivierabeach.org