Planning for fun

By BROCK RADKE

VIEW STAFF WRITER

Las Vegas Councilman Larry Brown is going straight to the experts to plan the building of a new Northwest park -- the children.

Brown recently met with a group of 50 Garehime Elementary School students to initiate plans for the building of a park adjacent to the school, at Alexander and Campbell Roads. The Ward 4 councilman and his staff spent almost three hours with the students.

"I was overwhelmed by their preparation," Brown said. "They had really done their homework."

But the meeting was not designed to simply give city officials ideas for the park. The students' design, with a little assistance and guidance from city planners, will end up being the park's construction plan, Brown said.

"The city's role in this project is to mitigate," he said. "We can remove unwanted elements from the plan and supervise budget issues, but other than that it will be built exactly the way the kids created it.

"This will give some real pride of ownership in this park and this community."

Using Garehime students as a resource for development is a natural choice, considering the success of the Garehime Heights project. Principal Francie Summers and her staff started the project when the school opened two years ago.

Garehime Heights is a schoolwide, student-operated micro-society that includes a chamber of commerce, monetary system, court system, elected government and business enterprises.

"The purpose of the entire Garehime Heights program is to teach students that they have certain rights, and they can exercise them," Summers said. "Hopefully, that goal carries over into their adulthood. It should set them on a course to think of themselves as citizens, and participate in that manner."

The life skills emphasized by the Garehime Heights program came into play during the park planning process.

"It was not just about what they wanted in the park," Brown said. "They were talking about things I didn't expect kids their age to be aware of, like not putting a skate park area too close to the tot park.

"They saw some elements, such as a horseshoe pit, to be not as important. But they also acknowledged that senior citizens would want to make use of the park, too, and they wanted to make something available."

The students used the Internet to research park design, and took a preparatory field trip to three parks around town to get ideas.

Although Garehime Heights prepared students for the park planning project, Summers said working with the city on the park would be a valuable lesson as well.

"It's a long-term plan that takes quite a few months," she said. "That experience is excellent for the kids because they are used to getting immediate results. This way they get to see the process."

The student planning group is in the process of getting more input from their Garehime Heights peers, and planning to make presentations at a neighborhood meeting.

"All 50 of those kids wanted to be in that park today," Brown said. "The energy and passion of that first meeting was stronger than a normal neighborhood meeting. They far exceeded our expectations."