Admin Management Excellence
League City
Due to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, the League City and Parks and Recreation Department provided immediate aid the community through shelter services, distribution centers, and Disaster Recovery efforts that lasted for several months. Hometown Heroes Park was transformed overnight into a shelter for those that were displaced from their home, causing parks and recreation staff to immediately shift their focus on the 600+ individuals and their pets that needed food, water, dry clothes and a place to stay.
Excellence in Planning
Baytown
With a population of 75,000+ residents, the city is excited by the prospect of their first public recreation center that will not only be an outlet for physical activity but also a social hub for people of all age groups, abilities, and demographic backgrounds—creating a stronger connected Baytown. The proposed recreation center is a two-story 62,000 sf facility on a 9 acre site surrounded by existing businesses, residential neighborhoods, and direct access/visibility from a major thoroughfare running through the heart of old Baytown. Burditt Consultants worked with the City of Baytown.
Maintenance Achievement
Schertz PARD Maintenance
The Schertz Parks Maintenance crew are always looking for new methods to be more efficient than their small, portable stage with multiple pieces to haul. They came up with the idea to convert an old flat bed trailer into a smaller mobile stage. The crew wired in new electrical outlets for sound equipment, welded on stabilizer jacks for stability, built in a storage compartment for cords and cables, and covered the trailer with outdoor carpeting.
Park Design Excellence
San Antonio
The San Antonio Botanical Garden is one of the City’s most visited outdoor spaces. The Garden looks to inspire people to connect and understand the importance of plants in our everyday lives. In spring 2018 the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s expansion was completed with a new entry to welcome visitors, adequate parking, an inviting visitor center and newly designed gift shop. The expansion also included new educational buildings, an outdoor kitchen, a family fun zone, and many new gardens.
Park Development Innovations
El Paso
We faced a clear and pressing need to refurbish the Memorial for World War II Veterans of Company
E. We planned originally to honor the Fallen Sons of El Paso by relocating the Memorial to a larger,
higher profile site. We envisioned a larger, more prominent setting that would draw more visitors,
who would become aware of the sacrifces the soldiers of Company E made for their country.
Feedback from the community made it clear to us, however, that the Memorial was already in its
proper site, already part of the neighborhood where the fallen soldiers had grown up. The feedback
from the community was heart-felt and compelling. We decided to leave the Memorial in its original
location. More importantly, modified our design plans to draw attention to the Memorial itself, with
its stark and solemn depiction of the Veterans of Company E.
Gold Medal
The Woodlands Township
The Woodlands Township Parks and Recreation Department operates and maintains nearly 230 miles of hike and bike paths, 140 parks, 14 swimming pools, 5 spray grounds, 4 major fountains, 80 tennis courts, 34 fields, 9 artificial turf fields, 500 acres of lakes and ponds and more than 4,445 acres of open space for residents to enjoy. The Woodlands Township also coordinates thousands of recreational programs yearly, with over 45,000 registrations per year for its residents for all ages, skills and abilities. Recreational offerings range from infant to senior and vary from arts and humanities to competitive sports leagues. Over 60 special events are held each year which draws approximately 250,000 people per year to The Woodlands to enjoy a truly unique hometown.
Individual Outstanding Service
Paul Dreyer
The Windmill Hill Nature Preserve is loved by many, and is a labor of love for one man. Paul Dryer has devoted over 30 years to this beautiful landscape that sits behind his home, located in DeSoto, Texas. When a development failed Paul stepped in to help pick up the pieces with vision, passion, unwavering commitment and effort, Paul helped not only conserve a piece of nature, but create a legacy for the City of DeSoto.
Agency Outstanding Service
Brownsville
Keep Brownsville Beautiful (KBB) is an organization under the City of Brownsville and governed by Brownsville Beautification Committee Board. KBB is able to service Brownsville through its extensive volunteer network that is led by their Youth Advisory Board. The Youth Advisory Board hosts and participates in community development forums, community clean ups, waterway clean ups, recycling events, educational events, beautifications, preservations, and restorations.
Recreation Facility Design
Grand Prairie
The EPIC is a unique “Recreation Re-Imagined” Center, centrally located in Grand Prairie’s Epic Central Park. The EPIC is a part of a three component recreational development, that includes Epic Waters Indoor Water Park and PlayGrand Adventures 10 acre inclusive playground. The center’s 126,000 square feet of enclosed space is enveloped in a curvilinear wall of glass that reaches three stories. The EPIC was achieved through a comprehensive citywide evaluation of community needs encompassing more than 40+ “EPIC Encounters”. Merging traditional recreation center programs with “Out of the Box” ideas, allowed programming space that includes: IKEA Culinary Arts Kitchen, Crompton’s Party Room and Pub, EPIC Performing ArtsTheater powered by Texas Trust and an Artist in Residence and Studio.
Honorary Life Membership
Rick Herold
The vision Rick has laid out in Grand Prairie and the projects executed by his staff have led to quality of life improvements in several areas across the city. Various facilities have been built and has led to lives positively changed over time. A world-class parks and recreation department led by Rick brought back two NRPA Gold Medal awards to Grand Prairie, an accomplishment that sits in a special category of its own. Rick Herold lives, breathes and sleeps parks and recreation, and has made everyone around him a better professional.
Educator Outstanding Performance
Dr. Joseph T. Walker
Dr. Joseph Walker is a professor at the University of North Texas. He received his Ph.D. in Recreation and Parks Administration from Clemson University, holds 2 Master degrees, and 1 Bachelors from the University of Mississippi. He has published articles, served as a consultant, presented at multiple TRAPS conferences, owned a business, conducted research/data collection and much more. More importantly, Dr. Walker is extremely passionate for the success and development of his students and exposes his students to real-world experiences.
Arts & Humanities
Class I
San Antonio
The Cardio Concert initiative merges cultural and fitness programs by offering a free fitness class accompanied by live music from the Take Note Youth Band. Community members are energized by music from the Take Note Youth Band as they participate in a Fitness in the Park fitness class designed to increase strength, endurance, cardiovascular health and overall well-being.
Class II
Round Rock
The Crafty Critters program decided to make giving back to the community one of their primary goals. In the past, all the participants of the program worked on their own projects for gifts or selling at a craft fair. Now, this group makes beanies for premies; mats for the homeless; pillows for those with breast cancer; lap quilts for those at a nursing home and much more. The program has become about socializing, working together and giving back by providing much needed items to the community.
Class III
Baytown
Baytown PARD hosted the first-ever Chalk-Art and Food Truck Festival as a collaborative effort to showcase Downtown Art District’s amenities while raising awareness and funds for multiple special needs groups on the City.It also served as the unveiling of the beautiful Umbrella Alley in the
Downtown Arts District, the first art installation in the new Public Art Program. The chalk art portion of the event was created to feature local artists and raise funds for the Baytown Art League’s Rising Stars program for special needs artists.
Marketing & Promotions
Class I
Plano
Plano Parks and Recreation celebrated its milestone 50th anniversary in 2018. The theme was “50 years of fun,” and the theme was integrated into all parks and recreation efforts in 2018. We created a special anniversary logo, a dedicated 50th anniversary web page, Flashback Fridays on social media, free commemorative items and signature parks, vehicle magnets for parks fleet, park sign hangers and a traveling 50th anniversary display for all open houses and community events. We were able to use the 50th Anniversary to share our story and to talk about why we started Plano Parks and Recreation, where we’ve been, what we do and what makes us different.
Class II
The Woodlands
The Woodlands Township PARD works in partnership with The Woodlands Township Community Relations Department for marketing of all programs. Marketing includes, but is not limited to, publication of the 32-page Action Guide three times a year which is mailed to all homes in The Woodlands (44,000+), online promotion on the Township website and through social media and other digital outlets. ThePARD also operates its own Facebook page and other marketing initiatives such as the Splash Guide, an informative tri-fold brochure that gets distributed at both recreation centers and all 14 pools throughout the spring and summer.
Class III
Mansfield
Following expansions of our department Facebook page to include site-based location tags, Mansfield Parks & Recreation rolled out a comprehensive marketing campaign this summer encouraging to ‘check in’ at one of the 19 parks. On a broader level, the campaign was designed to get residents to use the parks to take a break from technology and spend quality time with each other. Through videos, articles, photos and in-person events, the campaign has successfully brought families together IRL.
Class IV
Boerne
The City of Boerne PARD annual Guidebook provides informative details regarding yearly activities. This Guidebook describes specifics from youth to adult athletics, aquatics, community education and events, parks and trails, facilities and community partners. The Guidebook takes four months of planning, recruiting and coordinating before Guidebooks are mailed to every Boerne resident and distributed throughout the year at local events, businesses and city facilities. The programming staff is fully involved with this Guidebook from design aspects to providing the content, photos and advertisers to compensate the cost of production.
Lone Star Programming Achievement
Class I
Garland
“Put down the potato chips and strap on those never-before-used athletic shoes. That’s right, underachievers, this one is for you!”
The City of Garland hosted its inaugural Garland Guzzler 0.5K Race on Saturday, September 29th at Downtown Garland Square. Hundreds of folks from all over the DFW joined in on the fun-filled day of chip-timed racing and Oktoberfest-themed party afterward–consisting of live music, traditional and not-so-traditional Oktoberfest games and, of course, food and drinks.
Class II
Allen
Allen renovated their Community pool, Ford Pool, in 2017 but had difficulty competing against neighborhood pools. The City of Allen’s aquatic staff worked together and created the Ford Pool Loyalty Card program, which rewarded guests for attending 18 new special events that were offered weekly throughout the summer of 2018 at Ford Pool, including a Tie-Dye Day where guests got to enjoy tie-dye snow cones and use tie-dye stations to color t-shirts, a World Record Day that included attempts to break Guinness World Records at the pool, and a Backyard Olympics day where guests got to compete as teams in yard games such as cornhole, giant Jenga and ladder toss.
Class III
Mansfield
Barks & Rec is a unique program formed in conjunction with Mansfield Animal Care & Control to offer new fitness options as well as help increase animal adoptions by bringing shelter dogs to running and hiking classes. In the spring, Barks & Rec held a six week couch-to-5k running class. Each week, the runners were paired with dogs from the animal shelter to join them on the run. At the end of the program, the public was invited to join them for a 5k fun run and festival benefiting the animal shelter. In the fall, Barks & Rec took the form of guided hiking classes led by our naturalists and, again, paired with a dog from the shelter.
Class IV
Elgin
“S’mores in the Park” is an event created by the Elgin PARD to bring our different neighborhoods together in the parks using a fun and casual event to foster communication and community building. Along with engaging the community we wanted a program that would be appropriate for a variety of age groups and backgrounds to show our citizens that neighborhood parks are some of the best resources to actively interact with your friends, family, neighbors and officials. We encouraged all participants to bundle up and bring their friends and family. Despite threatening weather and the promise of a 27 degree night, we still had over 70 people attend “S’mores in the Park” to spend time with their family, friends and loved ones.