Comprehensive Master Plan - City of Alvin

Parks & Recreationneighborhood if there is an even distribution of parks and sufficient facilitiesand equipment available. National standards recommend a minimumneighborhood park size of five acres assuming an adequate and evendistribution. Although a ten‐acre park may accommodate ball fields andlarger recreation and open space areas, two parks that are five acres in sizemay equally and perhaps better serve the need while providing a broaderdistribution of neighborhood parks.Illustrated in Figure 4.1, Service Area Coverage, is the effective service areasof the seven neighborhood parks, including Marina Park, National Oak Park,Newman Park, Prairie Dog Park, Ruben Adame Park, Sealy Park, andTalmadge Park. These seven parks provide 19.4 acres for use by arearesidents. In addition to the neighborhood parks, the one‐quarter mile serviceareas of the community parks are also shown because they serve asneighborhood parks for the adjacent residents.The service area for neighborhood parks is divided into primary andsecondary areas. The primary service area is one‐quarter mile and thesecondary service area is one‐half mile. As displayed in Figure 4.1, ServiceArea Coverage, the one‐quarter mile service area coverage of the existingneighborhood parks is distributed generally throughout the most denselypopulated areas in central Alvin. However there are several neighborhoodareas, particularly south between S. Gordon Street and S. Johnson Street;along South Street near Rowan‐Burton Road; along Davis Bend Road nearShane Street; north of S.H. 6 and west of S.H. 35; and in the southeasternquadrant of the community along Mustang Road and to the east of FairwayStreet that are not within acceptable proximity to a neighborhood park.Achieving a system of neighborhood and community parks that is uniformlydistributed may be accomplished in several ways, including pre‐developmentacquisition by the City, parkland dedication requirements concurrent withsubdivision approval, public/private partnerships, and other strategies.While the provision of community parks is generally agreed to be theresponsibility of the government entity, there is much less certainty about theresponsibility of the entity to provide parks for private development.Requiring the dedication of parkland concurrent with a final plat or adevelopment site plan is a sound method to assure adequate park areasconsistent with the demand and impact placed on the public parks system bynew development.Page 4-23