City Council Asks if Small Park Could Fit Downtown

Can Los Altos add restrooms and a play structure downtown—and, perhaps, finally find space for a skate park elsewhere in the city?

Inching toward a master plan for its parks, City Council members added  some of those ideas to a list of features that consultants highlighted in their presentation Tuesday night.

Consultants Royston, Hanamoto, Alley & Abey, who are helping the city craft a parks master plan, concluded that Los Altos parks are beautiful, well cared for and well loved by residents, but there are “minor” details that need to be worked out.

Except they seem not so minor. 

Like not enough public restrooms, not enough access for the disabled, no skate park after years of thinking about it, no off-leash dog park and no community pool, to name a few.

After listening to the presentation of the 204-page draft parks master plan, the council told the consultants to come up with a concise summary that would be usable by the public, parks commissioners and others for future planning purposes. 

Some of the council members' specific ideas brought up Tuesday will be sent to the Parks and Recreation Commission for consideration to make them a part of the final plan. Mayor Ron Packard said he then wanted the matter back for another council study session.

One was how to get a small park with a play structure and public restrooms downtown.

Mayor Pro Tem Val Carpenter—who jokingly called herself the “queen of public restrooms”—said she wanted to see restrooms and a playground at Village Park, across West Edith Avenue where it intersects with San Antonio Road.

Consultant Cordelia Hill said the firm considered the .78-acre park too small to make the recommendation in the plan, but it was not impossible to include.

Other council members, however, expressed doubts about whether people would cross West Edith Avenue to use facilities there.

And while some members mentioned a downtown park as a place for "dad and the kids to hang out while mom shops," Councilwoman Megan Satterlee said she would leave her family at home.

Packard floated the idea of closing down part of a street to create a park. Hill said it would work as long as it’s an area that people would naturally pass through, and not an area tucked away.

Another hot topic was a skate park, something city leaders have talked about for many years and that has funding available as a capital improvement project.

In a telephone survey of 300 Los Altos registered voters conducted last August for the master plan report, a skate park was considered “not important,” and a focus group of older teens also didn’t rate a skate park very highly.

Carpenter took the consultants to task for not including middle school students in the research, and questioned whether enough families with children who would want a skate park were home in August to be included in the phone survey.

During the regular council meeting that same night, Youth Commission Vice Chairwoman Elaine Cole urged the council to build a skate park sooner rather than later.

“Me personally, I don’t skateboard—I would probably fall—but I know that many of my friends, neighbors, even some of my cousins, love to skate,” Cole said. “We need something to do in Los Altos. Teenagers can’t keep going to movie nights and then causing trouble because they’re not watching the movie.”

In the consultants’ report, Lincoln Park, the narrow strip on the west side of Foothill Expressway across from downtown, was listed as a good location, as was the Hillview/Civic Center area. Another possible location mentioned, but one that could be problematic for neighbors, was the land around Woodland Library.

How to get Los Altos to its goal of five acres of parkland per 1,000 residents was another issue raised by consultants.

Right now the city is at 1.8 acres per 1,000, one of the smallest ratios in the county. However, other neighboring cities have entered into joint use agreements with school districts, adding school fields into parks acreage.

According to the consultants, Los Altos would reach four acres per 1,000 residents by entering into joint use agreements with Los Altos and Cupertino school districts.

Some of the highlights of the phone survey conducted by Godbe Research last August: 

• Three out of four people reported they regularly participate in sports, athletic or fitness activities.
• Walking and hiking was listed as the most popular activities among residents.
• Walking or hiking, biking, swimming and jogging were listed as activities that are very or somewhat important to residents.
• More than half of all residents had visited a Los Altos park in the previous 12 months; almost a third had visited a walking or hiking trail in the city.
• 89 percent of respondents said they are satisfied with the distance to their neighborhood parks; 78 percent were satisfied with how they are maintained; 68 percent are satisfied with the availability of recreation programs for all ages; 59 percent are satisfied with maintenance of park restrooms;
• 96 percent of all surveyed said open space parks are very or somewhat important; trails, picnic areas, outdoor sports fields, community recreation centers, children's play areas and swimming pools were also rated highly;
• Shoup Park is one of the most popular parks in the city, followed by Grant and Heritage Oaks parks, and Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve. The latter is part of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and also has a county parkland adjacent to it.