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A 20-year draft plan for the future of parks and recreation in San Luis Obispo is now available for public viewing.
The Parks and Recreation Blueprint for the Future covers the next two decades and has been in the works since 2018.
It’s a conceptual plan to guide the development of parks, facilities and programs in the city through 2041.
The draft outlines five system-wide goals for the city’s parks and recreation: build community and neighborhoods, meet the changing needs of the community, practice sustainability, optimize resources and ensure safety.
Greg Avakian is the director of the City of San Luis Obispo Parks and Recreation Department, and he said the recreation plan covers as many community needs as possible.
San Luis Obispo city parks will soon get new signage to communicate a ban on camping-style tents on park grounds a move that comes as a growing number of homeless residents have sought shelter at public squares like Mitchell Park. With more tents popping up across the park in recent months, resident complaints and concerns about maintenance and safety spurred the city to review its ordinances related to daytime camping, officials said. click to enlarge PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF SLO TENTS NOT ALLOWED SLO city will start enforcing a ban on tents in city parks, like Mitchell Park (pictured), as the homelessness crisis grows.
Alexa Kushner
The San Luis Obispo community has been asking for more recreational activities in Mitchell Park for the past couple of years, according to city staff, so after receiving a nearly $200,000 grant from California State Parks, city officials have opted to put that money towards new pickleball courts.
Pickleball is a paddle-based sport, crossing badminton, table tennis and regular tennis. The ball is plastic with holes and the courts are smaller than tennis courts.
Greg Avakian, San Luis Obispo’s parks and recreation director, said pickleball is a very popular activity that everyone can enjoy.
“We have a very local and growing pickleball community,” Avakian said. “This is a very multigenerational.sport, a more activity-based amenity that is for all ages and abilities.”
Like most gym owners at the start of COVID-19, Dave and Brittany Pomfret of Equilibrium Fitness for Women in San Luis Obispo closed up their brick-and-mortar studio in March and by necessity got into the business of digital workouts. They offered their classes live on Zoom. They made on-demand videos. They rented out their equipment to members so they could continue working out at home. For a few months, this model worked pretty well. But by June, Dave Pomfret saw Zoom fatigue set in. He noticed his class attendance bottoming out. Classes that used to have 80 attendees in April drew only 20 on a good day in June.