Parks and Recreation Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning, everyone. I hope that you enjoyed your one-month vacation. We did have a July meeting, but I don't know about you. It wasn't a vacation for me. It wasn't a vacation. You guys have been so busy at World Camp. You had watch parties. You had summer camps, in plural. And I'm curious to know, you know, how that was, et cetera. Let's get started. And before we get started, did anyone have a chance to review the minutes? Okay, anyone have a second? Perfect, thank you. All in favor? Okay, I'll close. And we have a new question. the director's report, but if we ask, I think we have two guests, or are they?

If you're looking for the first general update, it's the Ponservo project. So as you recall, last time you asked to speak to the architects and designers. So they're here, and they're going to make that beautiful. Yeah, so they're going to go over that presentation, as I had described to them before, that I had I had kind of done it informally, but that you guys wanted to have them here. So, um, now they're, they're here to present. Um, this is the beginning of things that they're going through for the design. Um, it's already been through the development review committee. They're coming here. There's going to be all kinds of things that right now there's some concepts. And then as they get into finance and everything has to be more formalized, but, um, So we're going to bring them here. I'm actually, the beginning of my report will be, I want them to go first so they can, and then there was a second presentation that you guys asked and it's more informal, but there was a request to bring what had been done for the concept plan for the use time. That wasn't the last meeting. So I have that too in the form of a large slide presentation. It's like 80 slides. We're going to cut it down to about 10 or five. And I'm going to just show you what the concept is, because it's only concept. There's no funding or anything, of course, because that could be a $100 million project by the time it's done. So we'll start with our team. They'll introduce themselves, and then they'll make a presentation. We have it on.

No, it's on. So this is being recorded, so I'm going to reintroduce myself.

Good morning. My name is Maria de la Guardia and Keegan Marshall. We're principals at de la Guardia Victoria Architects. My office is a block away from Constance Circle Park. And I live directly across the street in an Olympic rock house of Salvador Park. So I'm right across. So parks are part of my life. They are yours. And so I would like to... I'm going to skip the historical part, but seeing how fascinated this committee is with the history of Coral Gables, I'm going to share my research with the history of Coral Gables. And so we have some, if we can zoom into that, into these. Oh, you can't zoom. Oh, thank you. Okay. Okay. Yes, correct. So that is the craft section. It's a rendering from Phineas Pace's office for the craft section. And you can see in the middle there sort of what was the oval part. Usually if you zoom in, you can actually see in great detail. But they had some very good ideas. And what we studied mostly, because obviously the programming has changed, the context has changed, were building at a different time, but we wanted to see what Pinius Pace and George Merrick's urban response was to, you know, for the park. What was the formal response? Like what kind of shapes or what was important to them? And what they did, because this was the cross section where they were going to be producing all of these wares for the house. They were going to be making fireplace, furniture, And it was sort of live work. And then these two exhibition halls that anchored both ends of the park, they were going to be on display. So somebody who was thinking of buying a house or somebody who had bought a house and needed to furnish it could come here. And they would meet with sort of a grandmaster. And this master would design something for them, like a fireplace. And then for free, so no charge. And then they would... Then they would present, then they would have somebody, one of the craftsmen in the neighborhood make it a building. Andres, the landscape architect on the project. So we just got started. And so what they did was they anchored both ends of the park. It's one long park. They anchored both ends. And then we had colonnades along the two long sides in order to create this enclosed ring park in the middle or like a courtyard. It was protected. It wasn't closed. It wasn't open the way it is today. So even back then, they felt the need to create this buffer along the edge of the park to make the park more intimate and make the park, you know, for the park goers to feel, you know, safe within the park. So these are sort of the cues that we're picking up on. So this is one of the ends, one of the expositions halls, and you see it faces on community traffic. So it faces, it addresses both the ends of Vaughan because this is how you would have arrived then. Today's not how you will be arriving. You will be arriving through crosswalks on the sides because This just doesn't take you anywhere in how it lays out today. And so each park in Coral Gables has a different personality, as we know. You have the athletic park. You have the family parks. You have the passive parks. You have the community parks. and we felt that Park Central Park should be the cultural part of Borough Gables so it's where we so it's where the community can engage the arts so it could be where there could be music and concerts and sculpture and art and that would be sort of the personality or the personality we're looking to pursue because it's one of the few formal parks in the downtown area, right? Most of the most parts, many of them are in sort of in the residential areas. This is like, boom, and it's part of the original master plan of Coral Gate. That's the property plan for the main park. You.

You know, I was trying to find things. So I was happy. I had to try everything. Oh, thank you.

And although it is in one of the , we found that the current had untapped potential. Now, considering its location and prominence, during the weekday lunch hours, there are an average between 5 to 12 people. So this is, you know, this is in a central location in Coral Gables, yet, you know, it's not working. And so why isn't it working? And so we found it to be primarily two aspects of the design of the park that we needed to resolve. One was obviously the lack of shade. Nobody's going to come down during lunch hour. The lack of shade, the lack of feeding, that part. But also, it is so wide open, which it was not American intention. It was so wide open that you feel like you're standing in the middle of a traffic circle. So you're there and you can follow the that are going around and around. It's a continuous stream of cars going around and around the circle. And so there's, you know, you just feel too exposed. It doesn't feel safe or even a nice place. And so our office put a lot of time into studying Frederick Law Olmstead's design for Central Park because what he achieved in Central Park Obviously, scale is much grander than what we have, but he was dealing with a lot of the same issues. How could he provide a natural setting in the most urban city in the world? What were his tricks, his tools, his techniques to get rid of the skyscrapers on the perimeter? so that when you're standing in the park, you're not seeing all the skyscrapers. And he did it with sections and berms and trees, and he was able to study lines of sight. So he put a lot of effort into studying Olmsted's ideas and incorporate. And so within our limited park, what we found that was important, well, what our primary idea was, if we can go to the next slide, was to create two anchors at the end, similar to what Pace proposed. One side would be the , which is sort of the concert bancho. Other side would be a sculpture garden, which has the Frank Stella sculpture that the city has purchased and asked us to find a place for. And then to create, a buffer all the way around the park to separate our precious green draft open area from the car. And Andres is doing it very masterfully with a series of layering of vegetation from tall trees to mid-size to lower planting to try to create a certain level of enclosure and sort of an intimateness within the park. So the perimeter, we have colonnades, we have sort of alleys of trees, and we have a bench on one side. We have garden walls with built-in seating. And so we have a series, you know, so that is to not just do one thing all the way around, but create a little bit of variety, but just separate the park from the park. I'm going to take you through a series of images. This is actually standing across the street and looking back at the park. You can see the arcades and the pavilions. The pavilions are located at the crosswalks, at the core of the crosswalk. In the middle, you see there's an alley, which is two lines of trees. It gives you a little bit of a window to the park. So it was a balance because on the one hand, we wanted to completely block and close the cars off. But on the other hand, the police and the fire and everybody wanted to be able to see into the park and have visibility and see what's happening. So we have to create sort of a balance out openness and closure. And so I think we've stricken that balance of those two. Yes. And so when you cross, so this is one of the pavilions in our cave. You have a question?

Can you get from one building, is it a walkway that's from one to the other?

Yeah. So if we can go back to that site, because there's a promenade, which is one big loop. which is a continuous loop. It's not covered. So if you can point out, so that promenade goes all the way around. You follow it all the way around, and it goes behind the other one, but it also crosses at two feet, right? It crosses there, and it crosses there. So it could be used by people that want to get exercise and walk.

They can just go around and get back up.

Yes, absolutely. So that is continuous. The two connections that we see on the left and the right to the slip lane, those are not, no, the ones to the slip lane at the end, I think they are those. Those are more service. So that's where, you know, when they come in to do maintenance, they're gonna be parking along in those, there's a parking spot in those slip lanes where they're gonna do car service and not necessarily for pedestrians because they really don't take you anywhere safe. So there's gonna be some barriers and there's actually gonna be sort of a chain to discourage pedestrians from going there, from trying to cut through there. So then here, go back one. OK, so here we see, through one of the entryways, we see a view of the sculpture as we cross through this landscape. Here, we're entering the park through one of the pavilions. And framed within that shaped arch, we see the other pavilion on the other side. So as you're coming in, you're seeing a similar building as to what you're crossing. and then the sculpture garden along the left after you come through. And the sculpture garden has a built-in bench for people to sit and admire the sculpture, rest. There's also another garden wall that also has a built-in bench. So for that low wall where you see the lady sitting on the right-hand side, That's sort of a built-in bench. Then there's another wall beyond the promenade, and that also has a built-in bench for seating. But then the idea is also, so here's looking back from the green, the idea is to have, this is it, entire coaching? Yes. Switch it around.

So I'm looking north, south, north, south.

Yeah. And so that's a really good question because the placement of the concert hall, Daniel was away from the residential areas. And so we're projecting the town towards the commercial areas. But also, what I also liked was that it was opening the park, because the park is really like a U. It was opening it to Miracle Mile, recognizing Miracle Mile and

And people near Miracle Mile looking south all of a sudden see it's not blocked off.

They could see blows. That's a nice design. And so here we can see the colonnade on this island. We've tried to do an interesting detail with the eave, where we will be able to sort of create or grow vines up into the roof rafters, and yet provide a covered area inside. Usually in pergolas, if you have the vines, you usually don't have the roof, and if you have the roof, then you don't have the vines, but here we've come up with the details to try to incorporate both.

Can you see a little more?

Okay, so this next one, this is one of my favorite spots. This is the LA. So here we're standing in one pavilion looking across this sort of formal, almost European-style grouping of trees where the trees march down in an orderly manner and create shade. So you have passage here in the middle, but then we were thinking that we were going to have... you know, a sort of loose furniture. Like I really want to be able to integrate sort of loose garden lawn furniture in the park, the type of furniture that can be moved around. Like, you know, if my friends get there and they want to pull up chairs and put them in a group and then just furniture that can move and travel around the park according to the uses. And I thought this would be sort of a great opportunity a great place for workers to come down and have lunch.

Do you have an idea of what's the furniture that you have in mind?

Yes, it's actually, it's the green, the green-like furniture that you see, for example, at the Tuileries in Paris. Yeah, exactly. So they make that. It's very high quality. It's sturdy. Yeah, and so... I thought it could all be sort of in that style. And what's beautiful about this French garden is that everybody goes to the lake at the end of the day and they gather. And then they start putting chairs. And then when everybody goes home, the chairs are in those exact same arrangements, you know, so that the chairs continue the conversation that was happening earlier in the park. And so... um and so um let's jump to the the band shell so this is um this is the one where you know we can have small small concerts and and um i also think there can be other other sort of informal events that happen in the park but this it would be formal, and then, you know, maybe we can have the, you know, some of the, yeah, some of the concerts that can, and I think it's a very attractive structure. It's very classical. So the language of the park is sort of the language of Coral Gables. We have some very highly classical buildings, which I think are, for example, the Colonnade or City Hall. Those are very classical. And then you have the more vernacular Mediterranean, sort of Spanish, style, which is like, that's like low art. And then you have high art, which are the more classical ones. And so what I wanted to do is create a very similar dialogue between our Odeon, which was very classical and could become an emblematic building of Pearl Gables, and the Colonnades, which were more in the vernacular style.

So architecture, like a seminar, gathering

in Vice Mayor Anderson. And I think you may have been there. And the discussion moved from Mediterranean to classical, which is different. Mediterranean is just one segment of what makes up classical.

There's some classical architecture that's awfully gorgeous, and I think we need to expand that world a little bit, because you can do great work.

Yes, and we have it here. It exists here in Coral Gables. Merrick saw the need of creating some of the more important civic structures and then obviously the houses which are the fabric of the city. They were more in the vernacular style. Creating that same dialogue between the two styles within the park. The park is almost like a micro part of the city. This is my closing shot, just a night view of a star. We're going to try to design a fountain to try to give the star a little bit of lightness as if it has sort of fallen from the sky and landed there in our park, in our fountain, and then it's going to be a reflected fountain. The surface is going to be sort of a Reflected and so on. It won't be. It won't be.

Is there lighting in the phenomenon?

Yes. There's lighting throughout. As a matter of fact, I think another one of our challenges is that there's so much light pollution in this park. So much light pollution coming from the buildings around it. I also want to create darkness in order to beautifully create our artistic lighting. Because of the light. So right now, I think that maybe either they don't come on or they're not working. The lights in the park, they don't come on. And because of the light coming from the reality, you could crop the park as if it were brought on daylight. Yeah. And so...

Yes.

So I think that's something that we might, also that we are going to pursue, which is to light the interior of the buildings. And then what happens is that the, maybe that's, I'm not seeing it. Okay. Yeah. the interior, the buildings read in silhouette. But very clearly, by reading, understanding the silhouette, you understand the building more than if we did the building. And so that's something that we're going to pursue. So what material were you thinking for the... Okay, so we... Yes, the odium. So the odium, the majority of it is going to be in Coralina stone. There's some parts that are going to be stucco. So some of the trim are going to be Coralina. The part that faces the green is mostly Coralina. But we're building it on an elliptic rock base. So as if it came from the ground, you know, so on the base of the building. And we're actually... We might be quarrying that Uletic rock because the developer, Alan Moore, is building a residential, the residences, and he, and the land that, the stone that comes out of the foundation, we're going to try to salvage and use it for the base of the building.

Is there going to be a mansion this way? Yes, yes, so...

Do you want to go back to the . So the furniture is going to be on the side. But the built-in benches are going to be sort of there's two circles of building benches around the star. One more closely around the star. And then you have the promenade. And then another circle of benches performance yes yes there will be there will be the possibility because i think if we keep flexibility then you know things more things can happen so we're going to have a limited amount of those built-in benches and maybe can you go back to them excuse me oh

Yeah, I think that's a concept I think we might look at, whether we limit that in number and in space, depending on what we see in terms of what event activations are going to be.

The only thing that we see look up

games starting there the only thing that i would see the wooden is because although you don't see it here but i mean it's awfully close to the street so like right now nobody plays soccer so and the wall has been there so it's it's kind of um i don't know how much a little bit um but you'll still have a lot of opening and and so it'll be interesting to see um And it will limit it. If you have that, if you have the seating and then you have the statute, there's not a lot of space. Because although it looks big here, it's not that big. And so hopefully, you know, you just go down a mile north on Ponce and then you can hit Pills Park and it's a big field there.

But isn't there also, and I don't know the size or anything, is there also like a family or children's park that's going to be developed behind the plaza?

There is, but it's not going to be like a big field. But yes, well, that's why they spoke. So the initial history of this site many years ago was there was a consideration of do you put playgrounds or children's beaches in here? This was at the very beginning of the process. And what we saw is because of the approximation of a couple of different things, the youth center is not that far right here, you know, that was one, which is a large play area. And then now even greater with that new development that we're getting, it's, it's right on the street, go right one block, that corner right across the street from the plaza is right now it's parking lot. That will be a park that will have a combination, and the board has seen it. They'll have a play area and also an art area as well, combining the two. So yeah, it's right there. It's literally across the street from the plaza.

My biggest concern, which is a concern that I reached out to Fred and and Hermes and Joe is, right now, not so much the north end, but the southeast and southwest corners to cross into the park or from the park, to say to sandwich, you get a cup of coffee, people every day are this close to getting run over by a car. And I'll tell you why. Because if you're crossing over there to the southeast corner to get a coffee or sandwich or a ceviche, Cars are coming, and there's this sharp turn. They don't see the pedestrian until the last second. And then cars are backed off trying to get into the plaza, the hotel. And so you have traffic backed off, and you have cars speeding because now they know that it's straightaway. The southeast and the southwest quarters are the most treacherous. They used to have slams that said, you know, slum. Those are the city to put it off. They haven't been put off. So those two corners are deadly.

Well, what we can do is

What we can do at a future meeting is there's a street project also that deals with the traffic mitigation.

So the project is just from the curb? Yes.

We're just talking about the green stuff here, but there is another project. And so I can talk to Hermes and see if we can get a presentation on what the street improvements are going to be and how that's going to be mitigated.

Okay, they're two separate, but the one that's beautiful, you do your job. If they don't do their job, it's going to take years. Well, they are. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

It's actually been quite a long effort to implement traffic calming devices here. I'm not representing them well because I'm just focusing on the part that's outside my scope. But for example, if you look here, this is a round table. All of this is a table.

So we'll present something that will give you all the specifics of what the tables look like and everything else, because there is a plan. No, you're right.

One is limited.

They think they have. So that's why, so there's a street improvement. We'll bring that to you too.

Well, we're moving very quickly because it's been very well received. So we went in front of DRC, BOA voted for it unanimously. The commission also approved it unanimously. And we're coming here, and we're going to the advisory board. I'll skate you to the stage. I'll skate you to the stage.

Well, why do you have to do something so classic and pretty? Like, it's so quick. You're getting a little creative.

There was a commission item that kind of turned over the management of the project. So it's, so there, you know, so there's certain things that were like time-wise, you know, procurement, procurement, all kinds of other things that they won't be. So it could accelerate it unless, you know, there's other things, fun being in all that. But once we get to that, so there's a possibility of acceleration.

Here on behalf of, um, and, um, so the development, the construction of it is in private hands. And so,

the construction and the teaching of this you want to explain um yeah we've basically been engaged by the city as part of the public benefit we're offering to oversee and manage that construction uh sort of bound by the procurement laws like fred was saying we can move in an expedited pace we can evaluate the bids fairly based on you know just kind of the merit and time

it within a year. Also, they're especially motivated because their certificate of occupancy is high into the completion of the park. So it's going to move things. And this is a very good question because everybody wants to finish tomorrow. Everybody wants to be using it. And so that's the kind of support we got from the community and

I think you guys need more staff to handle the permits for pictures because I think it's really hard to handle the permits for pictures because really I can see the beautiful shots. And if you're silent, the memory doesn't matter. When I was a kid, it was all pine trees there.

There was no seeding. It was just nature.

I lived up there for 64 years. So it was just pine cones and pine trees. And over the years, you've seen the evolution. This is exactly what I'm here for. I think it would.

We are keeping all of the garden

two large yellow tabacuyas that we're keeping as well. We have to relocate some because the sort of the footprint of the park has now expanded with the new roadwork. So we got to relocate a couple of them so that this fits, but the idea is to keep all of them and then we'll bring in more trees.

So one of the four corners,

When you enter, we are proposing to bring in some large biters. This is the native biters, and it's different from the biters that Benjamin knows, which is the one that you see here. So the native one has a smaller lead and wants them to penetrate. It's still a large character. So it also wants the story from the team to run. One of the things that we're hoping to get back into, we've already had some preliminary discussions with Mary Child, and they're making a report on the project. So they want to also be part of this, so we're trying to figure out how to get it.

Because obviously it's been discussed for years and years and years. wasn't like $2 million or something set aside. Some years ago, the city set money aside or it came from the plaza or something for this.

There's a lot of funds. So it's a combination. I'll get you the specifics if you want on the numbers. I don't have them off the top of my head, but it was discussed to the commission of what the funding was because there's some monies that are coming in from the developers. And then there's, there's some money that the city already had in place. I don't have the exact.

Yeah. The idea and money being moved for this.

And, you know, a lot of years, some years ago, that was attributed to this site. So that was funny. It's just with the scope of it and how construction costs, you know,

there's additional money to help get that.

But yeah, the total is around 10 million. We're getting 2.4 coming from MFPs from the plaza, 2 million from the city, and it's up to now from all of us.

And we have to go from some part of the donors. So like that would, I can hear you. No, that may not be, you know, I don't know, to the dollar, but yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for the presentation. Does anyone want to make a motion to approve? We can give a motion.

I move to approve the design and the project as presented to the board.

Second. All in favor? I'm sorry. All opposed? Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll meet you at the park. We have a question. I can't answer it. It's all good. It's parks design. We're just down the street. What's in mine to do?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

We went through June, July.

Now we're in August. We had summer camp.

Summer camp went really well. We had approximately, in terms of registration camp, about 535 per week, which is a good jump up from last year, which was 440 a week, but there's a reason for that. Last year, as you recall, we didn't have any schools. So Venetian pool is an extra 15 kids a week that we didn't normally have. But also we had an extra, we were 20 kids higher per week in tennis. And that was also because of Venetian pool because they do the pool every day and a lot of people didn't do last year. So those two, we saw an increased split. At the youth center, we saw there was 15 more kids a week. The youth center was attributed to a couple of things. We had our standing camps, the ones that have always been good, but they were sold out for the most part. The only weeks that are not sold out are usually the Fourth of July week, which is less, and usually the last week. But general camp was great. We did have a new soccer camp this year with our contractor, PSG. they started off slow with just a few kids and by, by the end of the summer, they were ramping up and they were hitting their 30 maximum. So word got out that they were doing it and people liked the camp. So that was good. Um, as always our indoor camp basketball and girls volleyball sells out. Um, so what we saw, which would be interesting, I want to see how it goes from year to year. Um, this year we had STEM camp. It wasn't like, They weren't knocking on the box with 30, 40 kids. They were at like 10 to 12. This year, we didn't have the bricks for kids Lego camp because that was a contractor that was not renewed and they did not come back. And we also didn't have an art contractor this year. I think they're coming back, but they weren't able to get their stuff together this year. So we missed out on those two and we replaced with STEM. I think We got good reviews on STEM. The word of mouth will get out. I just think people didn't know what it was. But it's an indoor camp. It kind of hit the same crowd as the art and the bricks and kids would in terms of that kind of activity. So we'll see how it goes. Tennis, obviously, for Ohio. We were kind of hitting maximums for the most part. Everything else, It went really well. Our golf camp was a little higher. Country Club was a little higher. So, golf and Country Club, last year, we were at about 10 a week for each one. This time, we're up to 14 a week. So, it's a little bit of an increment.

Golf went from a half-day camp to a full-day camp.

Yeah. So, I think overall, pretty good. You know, I'm knocking on wood because it's still our school, but Nothing gigantic has come up in terms of issues. We had a little small operational issues, but nothing big, which is great because every summer we just do this and breathe. So I'm very happy as to what happened there.

I want to say my daughter went to the tennis one. She was referred to as Queen Victoria. That is what they call her there. The staff, everyone was so nice, kind, considerate, like, responsible, I felt so safe. We were able to get some of our friends to also participate and join. So, you know, thank you so much. This isn't going to happen.

I see the kid in the camp. And they were, I think the tennis folks were taking the kid to the country club. And I'm You mentioned that.

That's one I don't even include in my programming because even though it's our program, it's that neighborhood tenants that they lease. It's a lease program. But yes, they were called to it. And we do have an arrangement with them where they come and use our board space. I just like the detail of the safety. Yeah. Actually, we worked with her on that. Three years ago, we took over, and we started seeing a can. We had to revamp everything with that. I called her in. I called her in.

We were crossing, and the kids stayed in the middle of the street while everybody got on the way.

We revamped everything. Well, thank you. We worked with her, and She was very responsive, and she utilizes our China, everything that we do here, we incorporate over there. So, yeah. So summer camp, that was good. The summer brought some events. Fourth of July.

So it would be...

Fourth of July, we went well. Pretty crowded. We were in the 30s, 30,000 plus. That was what the figures say. We now have some technology that allows us to give us ballpark numbers using AI, and it's using cell phone. So it doesn't necessarily take count of all the children, though, if they don't have cell phones, but We're in the 30s, 30,000 plus. We could be up to the 40,000, depending on what you saw there, or the course, I guess. Yeah. Much higher than last year, because if you recall last year, we had rain up until 7 o'clock. So it was light. So last year, we were in the low 20s. So yeah, this year was much bigger. One of the things that we're working with AI to capture that we didn't capture, but there's a lot of activity right on the border. Of course. Right outside of it, people that come to people's houses, that they park everywhere. So there's another area that we didn't capture. So we're going to see if we can capture it. I don't know if the AI will let us go in the resident, you know, private areas, but we'll see.

Oh, yeah. The greatest moment of all these fireworks, though, you probably remember the possible for that great moment.

Board meeting last year, he wanted us to bring back Whitney Houston's, or start a megaban or something.

So we did the drone travel, everything went well. We did have a little behind the scenes, but, you know, credit to all of us staff. I mean, we worked so hard that week. For several reasons, I'm going to get into another reason, but for July specifically, you know, we were working with a new provider of equipment vendor and it kind of, we still don't know why, but it kind of fell apart. All of a sudden, two days out, we had no equipment. We had no barricades, we had no lights, we had no ATVs, no message boards, and we had to scramble. So a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of phone calls, a lot of calling in favors, a lot of us, me yelling at vendors all of a sudden. I mean, my staff was like, we normally don't see you now. The fire came out. Yeah, because I'm like, you have a purchase order. I don't know how they put it on.

Whatever.

We got through it. We didn't get through it to our satisfaction. We got it done. Nobody knew anything from the public. Nobody had any idea of the difficulties we went. Our team manager staff, they knew. They were very helpful and supporting. We got some assist from our police department, University of Miami. Everybody came together to help us. So we got that done. And the event went well. And like I always tell my staff, On event days, we're ducks on a pond. Nobody sees these legs going crazy and us having finishing underneath. So nobody saw the stress. Only people close to us. My wife this year said, this is the most stressful I've seen in four years. I've been 15 years. It's usually everything. It's like, to me, this is clobber. No, not a man. You were depressed.

I'm sorry you guys went through that. Yeah, it's all right.

You know, it is. Although the staff did say that it seemed like I liked it. It's like invigorated. And this is one of those things is, you know, and it's hard because you do want to have fair procurement practices and you want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity. But when you have a vendor that you're comfortable with, Sometimes an extra couple of bucks is worth it. And my fireworks vendor, it's the same guy I've worked with for, right? The guy who shoots, not the guy who owns the company, the guy who actually shoots. He's been with us for 10, 15 years. I started talking to him in January. We started going over things, concepts, how he wanted them. He actually was trying to get me to do something that I tried. I couldn't. He didn't want William Houston to do it. You know what he wanted? He wanted that in the middle of fireworks, when we got to the start thing with Banner, he wanted us to lower and do one shot at a time and have the orchestra come back up, play it, and as they were ending, they'd do the banana. I'm like, they're not going to do that. They don't want to get out. They want to walk out. So it's great that I get to work with him on concerts because I'm comfortable with him. It's the same thing our drone providers. We had other drug providers that came, but this is the one that did it last year. And they knew, they knew exactly how to set up. They didn't have to worry about other drugs.

Very good. A lot more variety.

And what we do is we come up with a storyboard. I work with communications with Martha, our director. We come up with a storyline and what we want to convey. And this year, obviously, it was a 250. And then we give it to them. And then we give them. And then they come up with the narrations.

They come up with everything.

It is, though, however, on occasion, reminds me of that, like, a logical chart that they put something in, and you can't figure out what it is. It's a buttered line.

Well, I think that we go with the other themes, because sometimes, what I don't, if you're going to the resident, you'll recognize some of the stuff. If you're not, you're not. Sometimes I'm like, a little writing, like, yeah. But, so we were, the other reason why the Fourth of July was, um, At the same time, the week leading up to it was our national accreditation visit. So the team that visits to give us our national accreditation, we have to do it every five years we have that visit, was the week before. So we had to go through with that. Our staff really came together. It's always a trying time for me because we've been accredited since 2001. Over the years, I've kind of developed a reputation as kind of one of the national authorities on accreditation. I speak at the national conference this year. I'll be going to Philadelphia to speak, which is great because I'm in the city to save money because of my conference. They pay for the conference. I agree because I'm a speaker. I'm the head of the training committee, so we better be doing accreditation because if not, then we were. We're going to get the official report in October. I'll accept the accreditation. It looks like we did 100% passing, which is fantastic. That was a credit to everybody doing that at the same time as everything else. We had the walk parties. We did the Columbia game. Then we did the semifinal and the final. Everything went well. The Columbia game was the highest one. When Columbia is there, more people show up. I was so sad I didn't make the semifinals or the finals because if they would have, that place would have been rocked. We would have had thousands of people.

Did you feel that the plaza had their own event, semi-final and final, when I would walk by there, I don't know if it was a competition, because they had like a tent. DJ.

DJ had a tent, they had drinks. What I found was they didn't have a lot of people there. It wasn't a big space, but I think if you were just adults only, I think if you had kids, you were more open spaces. You were able to take the ball around. We gave out soccer balls. So did it hurt?

It was important for them to communicate that.

They did. Originally, we were looking to have all that stuff over there, over for us. But the size and scope of everything, so it didn't draw a lot. No, it wasn't very crowded compared to other events. Yeah, no.

The timing of the games, too. Right.

The final, because it was at least two countries with a little bit of a backing, was busier than the semis. Although the semifinal game was the best game of the whole tournament. We had a great time. That was the funnest game to watch. But it went well, and that's something that I'm sure we'll revisit if we get other things like another UM championship game or something like that, or maybe it like, you know, an issue with the dollars.

Something like the future, you know, you never know. Yes, it is. So, so, you know, we're going to do that.

In terms of, excuse me, do we have something we need to go now? No. The only thing I wanted to show you was some concepts of the UCEN that we can do. And I can send you the presentation, too, and we can talk about it then.

I can send you the presentation, too, and we can talk about it then.

I can send you the presentation, too, and we can talk about it then.

I can send you the presentation, too, and we can talk about it then. You'd send it to the next meeting if that's okay.

You guys know and you see it ahead of time and then we can talk about it then. Yes. Then we'll do that. I mean, we all did it at the pilot. That was great. We have some events coming up. Our adult activities come to senior week. That was a big week for them. We have events all week. People come out, we have lecturers, we have people visiting, we have different presentations, food parties, and socials, we have good stuff there for them. A couple of other events that are there are Kids Club, a parent's night out that's at the Country Club. If you want a day to talk to kids off and go to dinner or something like that, you can take advantage of that. And it's for sensory, you know, for kids that Apparently, mud helps them acclimate to sensory. If you have sensory issues, that's the kind of stuff that they can start getting acclimated to, sensory, touch, feel, grit. It's a therapeutic type of thing. Our physical recreation coordinator, she feels strongly about us learning.

And then, we talked about what we did to pollinate them, so that's 20. That's on the 20th.

So, in terms of the CIP updates, Fellowship Park is nearing completion. Most of the items, yeah, most of the items will be done mid-September. The only thing that won't be is the bathrooms, looks like in mid-October, and then the pavilion is an interesting one, because we had anticipated just shoring it up a little bit, and now, thanks to new posts and everything, we have to rebuild. So, it's going to take longer. We're going to fence that part off, but we'll open You know, so we'll see how operations go. We're working also with the school joint use agreement as to how they would use it and everything else. What we're hoping in the joint use agreement is that they get the, that they use their parking area after school hours.

Where the pickleball there, is it going to be the same as the other parks? You still have to do the all-time registration?

No.

It's not going to be a sandwich park.

It's going to be a studio lab still. And phase two, when we build the building and we have there, then it will be.

So it's just vertical.

And we're going to see how that works regionally and then we'll see what we have to do. We're also going to have to deal with how we operate the field. I mean, we have our software provider that'll use it. We have a lacrosse that wants to do it as well. We got to check and see how that works within the scope of the entire park. So we'll see. Cooper and Rotary Park, we're nearing the awarding of contracts. That's going to go to commission. It's not coming to commission. It's not coming to commission. Those two projects, then we'll be able to get started on timeline and construction. Granada, rain shelters, I'm waiting on a signed contract, and then we'll get a timeline. So it's going to happen.

They're trying to open up the PO now, and then when the PO's been issued, then they'll put it up.

They'll put it up in the timeline for mobilization. And then we'll work on that. With wall, as we talked about before, I went through a maintenance contract with a new provider. You know, I've been able to sleep easy. We haven't had any complaints. It's wonderful. They redrafted the greens as well. They packed up all the holes. I haven't gotten any complaints. Tomorrow, I go on Friday to look at it. So they're working on a lot of things. They're trying to combat some weeds. So there's been a lot of work there. So we're happy with the providers so far. And we'll see how they continue to move forward. At the Commission, there'll be some presentations. There is an ordinance to amend the Youth Advisory Board and make it into a team board. And to look at broadening it and not just have it be recreation. It would be all teen issues for the city. So we'll see how the management of that goes. We do have some issues with that board, like we were supposed to have a meeting yesterday. Attendance is an issue. Young people are scheduled very tightly. And so having them come up and show up has been always a challenge. So it's, you know, we do have to motivate it. members that always are going home, but then there's some that aren't. So we're going to see how we...

So you can just move to online, make it easier for it?

Well, we can provide them a Zoom option.

They just don't, you know, it's... We have a lot of extracurricular activities like soccer, golf, that gentle happens to coincide with the 6 p.m. time frame, so it's very hard for them to come in.

And we have to change it earlier when We can do whatever, but, you know, it's been a constant challenge. So we'll continue to figure out how to do that. The last presentation I'll be doing at the next Commission meeting is just the public input that came out of the 520 University dog park. It's just preventing that. After one of the last commission meetings, there was a public comment from the group, the neighborhood, and they had proposed a different location for the dog park, which is the Segovia parking lot. One of the members of that group, who's a resident, Lynn, she had made a request to come to this board, and I had told her that we already had a presentation today, so She wants to come to the next board just to present her the option that they considered. When they sent it to commission, the commission actually directed us to start looking at it. So if we're going to do a feasibility, our streets and transportation head, Melissa Desai from Public Works, she's going to do a parking study. We needed to wait on the parking study until things kicked in in a regular motion. So we can see what happens at night with you sports and everything else. Um, so to see your soccer program is now getting up and running and PSG is max, which is probably the next year.

Um, we have a lot more kids on that than you have.

Okay. So those are all the things that are going to feasibility. Um, the max, you know, um, And that's when I do my programmatic future forecast. It'll be my max for that program, which would be 350 or 400 kids, which is what we used to have there, which we will have again with PSE. So all that's going to go into the feasibility report, and we'll present that down the line. So we'll, you know, it's a different space. It's a much smaller space, but, you know, they wanted us to consider it.

Where is this actually located?

So the parking lot, the west parking lot along Segovia of the youth center, they suggested to turn that into the dog park. Is that what the church uses for parking? They use Sunday. During the summer, it's crowded. Their stance was it's crowded because it's parking for staff. But yeah, in the summer, our staff have to park there because everybody parks. I mean, it's still working somewhere. We have an act tapped by the commission to do an objective feasibility loop, and we'll look at it and see if it's even something they're concerned. See if they're using it for voting. Yeah, we're going to document what the event issues are. voting, special events, church, all that stuff. So we'll look at that. But so those are the things that we're going to present. And like I said, I'll send you the presentation and then we'll set it up as an item for discussion next week.

So that's all I have from the way I report.

Okay. Learning new business. that we wanted to discuss. I know that, no, I think new business was the summer camp that we all pretty old business would be at the dog park that we just talked about as well. And the incentive for sure. Definitely. All right. Next month. Sorry. Discussion items. Public comment.

So we put that in because like, like for instance, when, um, I got the request from Lynn. I told her, I said, listen, we already have presentations scheduled. I have a presentation with Paws Circle, and I want to do a youth center. With any meeting, the public is allowed to come in. It's a public meeting, and they can do a comment, but it would be a comment under Robert's rules of order, timing, three minutes, all that. And I explained that to her. I said, look, you can come in. I'm not saying you can't. It's just It's a limited time. If you want to have a presentation, we can schedule you at a meeting, and I can talk to the board and see if they're okay with that. And she was fine with that. She's like, I'd rather have a presentation than just come in and do a quick comment. But we put in there, just in case anyone says we can't, we're not allowed to come talk to you. We are allowed to come talk to you.

We just put it in as an outcome. I know we're bringing it back. just to make sure we know what items are coming back for the next month. Sometimes we load up the agenda so much we never get to. So I just want to make sure, what are we going to be discussing?

So the only things right now I have is the view center, and we can ask on the request for the $520 part. That's it. And at some point,

You can have the armies around, let us know about the streets. Yeah, we can do that the next week.

Because I already have these two, I will move it in the future. So what I try to do is, you know, we obviously, we go through these meetings, and then I go through the requests from the board, what was discussed, what may come back. So I try to push things along. You know, we got a request to have the architects upon circle. We got a request for this presentation, so I want to bring those back. So that's how we have my conversation and I do with Jeanette. As soon as she gets through the minutes, what do we need to bring back? What did they ask? So make sure you guys get what you need.

Thank you. With that being said, our next meeting is for Thursday, September 10th at 8.15. Maite already said that she won't be able to come. So if there's anyone else who's in line, please communicate it to UNESSA to ensure that then we can reform or renew TLA's schedule. I don't think that there's anything else. I'm leaving adjourned. Thank you so much.