It wasn't just about the future of City Hall and the downtown library; 591 at open houses also weigh in on future of parks and recreation

The 591 people who turned out at two city open houses this week had more to sort out than the two high-profile topics – the post-flood futures of City Hall and the downtown public library.

The open houses also gave citizens a chance to weigh in on the future of the city's park and recreation system to help the City Council develop a master plan for the system.

Citizens are being asked to look at three broad options: Do you want the park and recreation system to be as it is, which is a decentralized collection of parks and recreational venues? Or would you like a system that brings much of the city's focus to the riverfront as it runs from Seminole Valley Park in the north through the downtown to sandpit-turned-urban fishery on the south edge of the city? Or should the system be some kind of hybrid?

Driving the need for change in the system is the 250 or so acres of new open space that will become part of city as it buys out and demolishes flood-wrecked properties along the Cedar River to create a flood-protection greenway.

With that much additional new open space comes additional cost to maintain it, cost the city can't afford without making changes elsewhere in the system, explains Julie Sina, the city's parks and recreation director.

Among possibilities, the city may ask neighborhoods to maintain tiny neighborhood parks; it may mow less frequently is smaller, little used parks; and it may turn sections of other parks into naturalized area with native plants, switch grass and walking trails so they don't have to be maintained or mowed.

Gail Loskill, marketing manager for the city's Parks and Recreation Department, said Wednesday that the city estimates it costs $2,237 per acre to maintain and mow a typical acre of park space and only $250 to $450 per acre to do that same with a naturalized area.

Seventy percent of the riverfront greenway could be left in naturalized state if the City Council decides to keep a decentralized system of parks, while 70 percent of the greenway would be developed -- perhaps with ball fields, soccer fields, trails and other recreational amenities -- in a centralized system that focuses on the riverfront.

The city's indoor recreational needs also are driving the city's plans for the future: The city's Time Check Recreation Center was destroyed in the flood while the city says its Ambroz Recreation Center in a converted school on Mount Vernon Road SE and the indoor Bender Pool need replaced.

The city also needs to make a decision on a proposal to build an $82-million community center/recreation center in Ellis Park.

The city's Sina said the city's next open house on facilities and parks on Oct. 6 will give the public an idea of what they had to say about the options for the future. For instance, by then, residents might get a feel if the city will push ahead with the $82-million center, or instead, might build a less-ambitious recreation center in Noelridge Park and smaller ones in Jones and Cherry Hill parks.

In any event, Sina said residents will begin seeing the city taking some steps early on to naturalize some park space and to mow some park space less often.

Consulting firm Sasaki Associates Inc., Watertown, Mass., is helping the city to develop its parks and recreation master plan, and Jason Hellendrung, a principal at the firm, on Wednesday said residents also will see the emergence of the greenway in the near-term as funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency – funding was announced on Wednesday -- arrive to allow the buyout process to proceed.

Other riverfront features that might start to take shape sooner rather than later, Hellendrung said, are a riverfront amphitheater on space next to the Police Department on the west side of the river and the expansion of a river walk through the downtown on the east side of the river. As part of the river walk, residents might get an early first glimpse of the pillars that will be put in place for a system or removable flood walls, he said.