Unfunded Infrastructure: Santa Clara’s Parks, Playgrounds and Pools

Santa Clara has 47 parks and 65 park buildings, many of them built in the 1960s; and, like other city infrastructure built in 1960s is reaching the end of its usable life. Now, Santa Clara faces almost $400 million in unfunded Parks and Recreation needs.

“When we did our condition assessment in 2017 for those 47 parks, we had $89 million worth of investment that was required for the first five years,” said acting Director of Parks and Recreation Cynthia Bojorquez “and another $319 million for our buildings.

“We’ve made great improvements in some of our parks, already,” she continued. “We just recently opened the Magic Bridges park. We renovated Maywood park and we renovated Westwood Oaks park. But we have a number of parks across the city that are still in very poor condition.”

Even parks that have been recently renovated have urgent needs. “At Bowers park, we made a huge investment in the playground,” said Bojorquez. “But we’ve had the restrooms closed for well over a year” because they’re not usable.

Other needs aren’t as obvious but essential to keeping parks and buildings available to everyone — ADA accessible pathways, signs and lighting, for example. “These are the amenities that people expect,” said Bojorquez.

The popular playground at Henry Schmidt park — known in the neighborhood as the “choo-choo train” park — is another park that’s at risk. “It’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt on that playground,” Bojorquez said. “It’s going to deteriorate. It’s going to fail. We’ve already seen things come off it [the playground].”

The deteriorating International Swim Center is one capital need that everyone knows about. A $45 million investment is needed to make ISC fully functional again.

“This is sufficient to fund the community’s use of the pool, a 50-meter pool and a recreation pool” said Bojorquez. “It will allow competitive swim practice. It will serve residents who want to swim year-round, where people can do aqua aerobics, and other kinds of exercise. That’s what this plan is geared toward.

“One of the things that people have not fully understood is that, in closing the ISC, we’ve also burdened our other pools,” said Bojorquez. “So those folks are going to Mary Gomez and Warburton [pools]. Those are also old and are going to need investment.” Otherwise, “at some point we’re going to reach a level where we will not be able to keep those services.”

“The investments we make in parks and recreation facilities is an investment in community health and wellness,” Bojorquez said.

“The National Park and Recreation Association speaks to the value of Parks and Rec in seven different dimensions, including cultural, economic and health,” she continued. “When you invest in those facilities, you are investing in your own families, in your own experience, in the quality of life here in Santa Clara, and in your health. What could be more important than the health of the community?”