Site Condition Assessment and Capital Planning for City Parks
The City of Raleigh was seeking to develop a long-term capital maintenance strategy for its Parks to identify the best use of funds, prioritize projects, and make equitable investments throughout the eight park subsystems.
Thanks to FEA’s work, Raleigh Parks now has a much more detailed, comprehensive, and quantitative understanding of our asset portfolio. With tens of thousands of assets across hundreds of sites and facilities, prioritizing a limited budget to address an ever-growing list of deferred maintenance needs has always been a struggle.
Today—using the data, tools, and analysis that FEA helped us develop—we are able to take a more holistic, objective, and equitable approach to that decision-making process.
–T.J. McCourt, Planning Supervisor, City of Raleigh
Raleigh, “the Park with a City in it,” maintains over 10,000 acres of parkland and protected open space. The City has 1.2 million square feet of maintained building space, 140 developed parks, and over 50 open space properties.
FEA worked with the City to develop a capital maintenance study for the park system, utilizing the following four-step approach:
- Met with key stakeholders to understand needs and priorities
- Performed site condition assessments related to capital maintenance
- Developed recommendations for a prioritization matrix and criteria to identify future project needs and capital maintenance funding
- Developed a 10-year capital improvement maintenance improvement plan
The assessments included 140 developed parks and 50 open spaces, 120 miles of trails, 112 tennis courts, 74 playgrounds, 59 ballfields, 43 community centers, 21 athletic fields, 14 historic properties, 8 aquatic facilities, 7 dog parks, 4 lakes, and 3 nature preserves. This included parks such as Pullen Park, the first public park in North Carolina, the 5th oldest operating amusement park in the U.S., and the 16th oldest in the world.
Our approach provided the City with the basis for prioritization of repair, replacement, and renewal funding for its parks. In addition, the asset management tools we provide will enable capital management planning, management of life cycle costs, and strategic funding analysis.
Learn more about Raleigh parks, here.
Check out this video about the project.
