FAIR OAKS, CA (MPG) - On Wednesday, October 16, the Fair Oaks Recreation and Park District (FORPD) hosted a public outreach meeting at the VFW Hall (8990 Kruitoff Way) to share the draft plan for the Phoenix Park project. Dozens of citizens attended the meeting to learn about the plan concept and provide feedback.                                                         

Because the project is funded by Measure J, a bond measure that Fair Oaks residents passed in the last election, District Administrator Mike Aho said public feedback is vital to the project: “Your comments are really important to us, and we take them very seriously.”

The District hired Verde Design — a landscape architecture firm that specializes in civil engineering, sport planning, and design — to create the design and construction documents for the project. Chris Sullivan, project manager at Verde Design, presented the draft design and explained that the major changes to the park will involve transforming the current vacant dirt lots into two girls’ softball fields 200 ft. in dimension. The project also includes improvements to existing parking lots, playground area enhancements, and a berm to mitigate noise concerns for adjacent neighbors.

Parallel parking will no longer be permitted along the street in the park, which — along with the installation of a roundabout — should improve traffic flow for those entering and exiting the park. The park currently has 120 parking spots, but with the proposed improvements to the existing lots there will be 227 spots. The addition of more than 100 new parking stalls would also help to relieve traffic congestion in the park. Depending on the cost, there is also the potential to create two new parking lots, which would give the park almost 70 additional parking spots. But Aho explained that the creation of those new lots would be at the Board’s discretion and they are not guaranteed to be part of the project because there is not enough funding.

With the Phoenix dog park and the current baseball and soccer fields, the park already welcomes many visitors each week — especially on game days. Citizens said that the parking situation is “already terrible” on busy days. They expressed concern that adding two new fields for softball would bring in so many new people that the additional parking might not be sufficient and that the parking situation will only become more challenging. Locals who live in the adjacent neighborhoods echoed those concerns, stating that cars line their streets on game days, often blocking their driveways — sometimes causing altercations.

Many attendees asked why the project is focused on creating two new fields instead of addressing the current parking situation. They asked if it would be possible to create just one softball field so there would be more funding available to ensure that the two potential new parking lots are built in addition to improving the existing lots.

Aho explained that the two softball fields were the District’s priority in this project, “but we’re hearing something different in this room.” He said it would be possible to just build one softball field and leave the other area as turf, leaving more funding available for the parking lots — if that is how the Board decides to spend the money. District staff will share the community feedback with both the Measure J Bond Oversight Committee (BOC) and with the FORPD Board, and Aho encouraged everyone to attend those meetings as well. The next BOC meeting is on November 5 at 6:30 PM at the Old Fair Oaks Library (4200 Temescal St.). The next Board meeting is November 20 at 6:00 PM at Village Hall (7997 California Ave.).

The current budget for the Phoenix Park project is almost $5.5 million, with $5 million coming from Measure J funds and an additional $450,000 in grant funds. Construction is expected to begin in Spring 2020.