PHOTO COURTESY BROWNSVILLE PARKS AND RECREATION
The Brownsville Parks and Recreation department announced its survey outreach regarding renovations to the city’s recreation centers and the possible addition of another center, according to a city official.
According to the City of Brownsville website, Brownsville currently has three recreation centers: the Downtown Recreation Center, the Gonzales Park Community Center and the Oliveira Park Community Center.
During the April 7 city commission meeting, Sean De Palma, director of the Parks and Recreation department, presented “Recreation Reimagined.”
In an interview with The Rider, De Palma said his department started public engagement and outreach to gather citizens’ input on renovating the three existing recreation centers and what they would like in a new one.
“This is the first step on how to get a new facility and to renovate our existing facilities … because we need to get the input from the citizens to really understand what they imagine, what they desire,” he said. “Then, create a plan to deliver that to them.”
De Palma said the idea came up because the department knew there is a need to update the existing centers and to expand their capacity by building a new one.
The director said the department has received about 800 to 1,000 completed surveys, which have been “very supportive” for them.
Links and QR codes to the surveys are shared through the department’s social media.
“It’s very focused on new amenities, modernizing our current facility, and it seems like the community will support these types of projects,” De Palma said. “So, we’re happy about that.”
He said the commissioners were “very much in support” of it.
“When I was at the city commission [meeting], they really want to see what our surveys render, what the outcome of our survey is, and they’re excited about the possibilities,” De Palma said.
He added once the surveys close, the department will collect the data and present it to city leadership to demonstrate the community input.
“Then, we ask for permission to go to the next step, which is hiring a designer and have them design what a future rec center would be,” De Palma said. “That’s the next step, but we want to bring the right data to our commissioners in our leadership and our city manager.”
For updates on surveys, visit the department’s social media.
Nicholas Gonzalez, a UTRGV integrated health science freshman, said he was not aware of the survey but was interested.
Gonzalez said he does not go to the city’s recreation center, but more exercise machines would encourage him to visit them.
Bryan Villarreal, a psychology junior, also said he was not aware of the survey or the public engagement and outreach.
Villarreal said he attends the Gonzales Park Community Center once a month and would like “more awareness” of the survey.
De Palma said his expectations for the surveys are to deliver what the citizens want.
“As they’re stating what they want in our surveys and our community engagement, our job in our department is to really take that information and those requests and those desires from the citizens and make plans to make sure we deliver that,” he said.
