The Town of Windsor is resuming its plans to expand the borders and facilities of Keiser Park, after a nearly eight-month pause to coordinate potential joint uses with the Windsor Unified School District (WUSD).
The Town of Windsor acquired Keiser Park from the county after its incorporation in 1992, and additional uses are called for in various plans, including the 2040 General Plan, completed in 2018. The Keiser Park Master Plan was originally finished in 2008, and has resulted in the addition of the playground, three full ball fields, two smaller ball fields, the oak grove and the picnic area.
According to Olivia Lemen, parks and facilities manager with the Town of Windsor who presented to the council at its Feb. 2 meeting, the Keiser Park Master Plan Update will be an opportunity for town officials and staff to engage the community in order to assess the communities’ recreational needs, and to come up with realistic prospects for developing an expanded park.
Public outreach, beginning with stakeholder interviews, is expected to begin in March and end in October. Beginning this month, staff will also begin assessing facility needs, design alternatives and analyzing costs.
“We were just starting to do community engagement when we paused this project. That will be the next step — to engage with our stakeholders and really get down into the events and opportunities (such as Summer Nights on the Green and farmers markets) to speak with the community,” Lemen said. “After all that data is gathered, consultants will get back with the preliminary site design and alternatives to allow us to move the boxes and come up with a plan that meets all of our current and future needs within Windsor. And then the update and final environmental review will come back to council for final adoption.”
Both the town and the school district have plans for improving Keiser Park, which borders Windsor High School (WHS), with both entities purchasing properties outside the park’s current borders for the purposes of increasing uses. The town hopes to construct an aquatic facility and recreation center and add about four acres to the park following the recent purchase of two properties and the expected purchase of a third.
WUSD also purchased two properties on the southeast border of Keiser Park that the town had been eyeing.
According to officials, the conflict between the town and the school district arose because the Sonoma County Agricultural and Open Space District Funds originally planned to be used to purchase two of the properties for the park could prohibit certain plans the school district had in mind, such as the construction of a multi-use facility with career technical education classrooms and workspaces such as a commercial kitchen for their culinary program.
Lemen told SoCoNews that, following a joint meeting between the Windsor Town Council and the WUSD board of trustees last July, the town decided to use Open Space Funds only for the property at 625 Wall Street — relatively far from WHS and less-suited for joint uses.
Properties at 450 Duncan Drive and 475 Ginny Drive, closer to WHS properties, were purchased with Park Development Funds instead of Open Space Funds.
The town is currently in escrow on the Wall Street property, and will need to secure an additional $800,000 to supplement the Open Space Funds allocated towards the purchase.
Relations between the town and the district have since improved.
“(Last summer) I thought we were all almost on the same page but didn’t know it,” District 3 Councilmember Debora Fudge said. “The fact that we stalled this for a year gave us time to work on that, and I’m just really happy to be working with the school district so closely. Both our entities need to find money to build any of this, and then I think we should probably think about how we could do that together, and then think about how the facilities could be shared.”
Fudge recommended staff bring the question of funding into conversations with the public, so the community understands big projects have big price tags.
Councilmember Rosa Reynoza raised concerns about Jaguar Way becoming a thoroughfare motorists may be tempted to use as a shortcut.
“It’s really concerning to me to think that people would use Jaguar Way as a thoroughfare, so my recommendation is to block access except for emergency access and for special events. To have it open 24/7 or even during park hours makes me really nervous for kids and families,” Reynoza said.
Mayor Sam Salmon said he was uncomfortable with Keiser Park for the location of an intense-use aquatics and recreation center, as more people live on the east side of town and he said residents wouldn’t be able to walk there, detracting from sustainability goals and increasing vehicle miles traveled.
“We’re going to build a facility that’s really at the edge of town,” Salmon said. “The last thing I want is people driving their cars across town, and that’s what this represents to me. It’s going to be an intense use and people are going to have to drive to get there.”
He recommended considering properties such as the Bluebird property currently used as a community center, and asked staff for more information on accessibility for residents to bike or walk to Keiser Park.
Councilmember Fudge said that although there are more people on the east side of town, the residents of the Vintage Greens, Ventana and Shiloh Greens neighborhoods and those living north of the park would be able to walk or bike there.
“There’s a huge chunk of people who would be able to walk there,” Fudge said. “I think adding onto this park is a really smart thing to do.”
WUSD currently does not have funding to develop the two properties they purchased or any other projects of mutual benefit that could be planned in the ongoing Keiser Park Master Plan Update process.
Some ideas raised for how joint use could occur following development include a large building with a split of some sort in the middle, or using fencing between town-owned and school-owned properties that can be scheduled to be opened when needed.
