January 2015 - Parks & Recreation - 18

Community Center

Agency Spotlight: Louisville Metro Parks &
Recreation, Kentucky
By Samantha Bartram
Municipality: Louisville, Kentucky
Population: 756,832 (est. 2013)
Year Agency Founded:
* Board of Park Commissioners,
1890
* Louisville Parks & Recreation
Department, 1942
* Louisville Metro Parks & Recreation Department, 1968
Annual Operating Budget:
$24,306,900
Director: Michael J. Heitz, AIA
Full-time Employees: 326
Part-time Employees: 35
Seasonal Employees: 237

Essential Information
120 parks, six parkways, 12,701 acres
of open space, 12 community centers, two senior centers, two arts and
cultural centers, one adapted leisure
division, four swimming pools, one
aquatics center, 16 spraypads, 14 spraygrounds, nine golf courses, three youth

golf courses, two historic homes, one
extreme skatepark, two outdoor amphitheaters, five cemeteries, 300 restrooms, 500 total structures, 175 playgrounds, 135 athletic fields and 160
tennis courts. Louisville Metro Parks
& Recreation has earned accreditation
by the Commission for Accreditation of Park and Recreation Agencies
(CAPRA) for two consecutive terms.
Extreme Awesomeness
Louisville Metro Parks & Recreation
has a lot to boast about, beginning with
the above-mentioned amenities. Since
its inception in the late 1800s, this robust park system has been dedicated
to improving the lives of Louisville
residents with top-notch facilities and
innovative programs. In 1891, " father
of American landscape architecture "
Frederick Law Olmsted contracted to
design several parks still in operation
in Louisville, including Shawnee, Iroquois, Cherokee, Boone Square and

Louisville Metro Parks & Recreation
offers a wide variety of programming for
the whole community, including group
sports, arts, fitness and more.

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Baxter Square, as well as two (Kenton Place and Logan Place) that are
no longer in operation. In those days,
Olmsted parks represented the pinnacle of intelligent, responsive design, as
communities across the United States
clamored to make use of his expertise.
Today, Louisville Metro Parks
continues in that same cutting-edge
tradition with locations like Louisville Extreme Park. When initial construction was completed in 2002, the
park boasted 40,000 square feet of
outdoor concrete skating surface, a
wooden vertical ramp and a 24-foot
full-pipe appropriate for skateboarding, inline skating and biking. Recognizing the value of the site to visiting
and resident skaters, BMX bikers and
X-Gamers, Louisville Metro Parks
is currently renovating the site, with
new features set to open in 2015.
Likewise, Louisville's Eva Bandman
Park has also enjoyed its share of extreme attention, having hosted the 2013
Cyclo-Cross World Championships.
The park became the first site outside
Europe ever to host the event, which
features top male and female cyclo-cross
athletes from all over the world.
Preeminent Programming
Louisville residents are fortunate to
have folks like Assistant Director of
Recreation Ben Johnson on their side,
especially if they're unsure of what to
do at any one of the dozens of parks,
recreation, or art and culture sites
in the city. A public service veteran
with more than 10 years' experience,
Johnson has had a hand in developing
programming for youth, teens, adults

January 2015 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January 2015 - Parks & Recreation