Paths, sidewalks, trails and lighting topped a list of things Maira Chavez wants for the San Antonio park she visited on Saturday.
“We would love some paths and side trails because we could utilize that instead of … going where all the rest of the people are walking,” Chavez said. “Restrooms — we always need restrooms, especially if they’re clean and lit,” like those at Brackenridge Park.
Those features along with restrooms and a pavilion were among 35 options the avid runner chose while playing a board game, Sueños (Spanish for dreams) of San Pedro Springs Park, saying those things would make the park more inviting for her running club.
San Pedro Springs Park is among 67 city parks, recreation and open spaces slated for rehabilitation in the 2022 bond, with $1.75 million committed. Another $1.75 million was contributed for the project through the office of District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur. About $250,000 of the total has been earmarked for tree mitigation.
Homer Garcia, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department director, was not available to comment and sent a statement via email that said community input would assist the department in determining a potential scope of work for the bond project.
The oldest public park in the state, San Pedro Springs has a story that dates to 9000 B.C., when the Payaya people hunted and gathered near the natural springs that still flow in the park. In 1729, the Spanish government declared it a public space. In 1888, it was the site of the city’s first zoo.
Today, the 46-acre park in the Alta Vista neighborhood is home to a tennis center, a spring-fed swimming pool, a performing arts playhouse and a branch library, walking paths, a grotto and green space.
Now that it’s due for an upgrade, city leaders and park advocates are asking the community what they want most for the park, and getting answers through both the Sueños board game and an online survey available here.
Under the cypress trees where Fitness in the Park participants were being put through their paces on a recent morning, Chavez tried her hand at the board game, first choosing from the park feature cards.
She put things like a skate park and playscape last because those don’t appeal to her personally. Pickleball courts made the cut but fell somewhere in the middle of Chavez’s other priorities for the park.
Then she narrowed down the list by using wooden tokens representing the cost of those features to decide which ones were worth the cost to taxpayers.
The game, developed by Sarah Woolsey and Ashley Bird, has been played many times over in the last few months at various events where park visitors have gathered.
Woolsey is executive director of the the placemaking nonprofit Impact Guild and Bird is founder of Blooming with Birdie, which designs educational experiences. Their goal with the game-play is to gather and compile los sueños from park users that they think are a priority.
Bird said there’s still much to learn about what the community, no matter where they live in San Antonio, wants for the park, “where life here originated.”
“Everyone has a story at San Pedro Springs Park,” Bird said. “They may not have been there in five years or in 10 years, but they’ve been there and they have something to share about it.”
Members of the American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AIT-SCM) hope to see more interpretive signage in the park describing its long history as the source of Native Americans’ “creation story” and a village for thousands of people. AIT-SCM leaders have provided that input to the park planners, said Isaac “Papa Bear” Alvarez Cardenas.
“I think that it’s important that San Pedro [Park] acknowledge the past there at that park,” Isaac Cardenas said.
Hector Cardenas founded the nonprofit Friends of San Pedro Springs Park 30 years ago when he was president of the Alta Vista Neighborhood Association. The group developed a master plan that led to replacing two ballparks at San Pedro Springs that were limited to league players with open green space.
“We’re more of a watchdog group now more than anything else,” he said. “We spend time lobbying … and making sure the city takes care of the park basically.”
Hector Cardenas said his favorite thing about the park is the grotto, which was created as a place of respite in the 1880s.
But the park needs more lighting and irrigation for the trees and landscape, he said, and less in the way of activities. “There’s a lot of stuff to do there already, we don’t need to overload this park,” Hector Cardenas said.
Kaur said she wants to get at least 1,000 “community inputs” on the park plan.
“We wanted to demonstrate what was possible when you do a really strong, thoughtful community engagement effort for how to use bond dollars,” Kaur said of the game.
She’s also hoping that the effort will lead her to people who are “passionate about keeping the park going,” and who could form a group similar to the Brackenridge Park and Hemisfair conservancies, which raise funds to support park improvements, programs and events.
Kaur said she’s been talking with officials at San Antonio College about a partnership that would benefit the school and the park, located across San Pedro Avenue from the park. One idea is to build a pedestrian footbridge spanning the street between the two, she said.
One last chance to play the Sueños game is coming up on Saturday, July 27, from 9 a.m. to noon, during a family-friendly day in the park with food, music, history and activities. The survey is open through July 31.
