Improving Recreation

Improving Recreation – Gardner MA

The City of Gardner Massachusetts has accomplished successes in Improving Recreation, including, but not limited to:

GardnerMagazine.com spoke with Gardner Massachusetts Mayor Michael Nicholson about how Gardner has accomplished success in improving recreation. Here’s what he had to say:

Mayor Nicholson: Alot of what we’ve done before is we’ve added a new walking track around each of our parks and playgrounds. That most of these are at least 1/4 of a mile long. To get people out. That way, if some kids are playing in the playground park, the parents could do something else. The dog park is something that we’ve recently been working on here. And while there’s still some improvements we need to make for that, those are all on our radar. The new playground over at Bailey Brook Park. Feedback from that was that we have a lot of places in Garner for basketball, why not try something different. So that’s why we tried pickleball. And now we’re getting requests for racquetball. And its one of those things there too that were just looking for people to tell us what they’re looking for and how can we get those here in Gardner. Its how we got the pickleball court. It’s how were getting the disc golf course that’s currently under construction by the Pearly Brook reservoir. There’s different things that were adding to make it so that if anyone has any interest in Gardner, they can go there. If its generally working out, check out the fitness court at the High School. If you like tennis, the Dernalowicz tennis courts at the high school are still all available there too. If you like basketball, go to Pulaski Park. There’s some great basketball courts there. Or the new basketball courts over at Ovila Case Park. We talked about pickleball, we’ve talked about disc golf or frisbee golf. What else can we do, because we just haven’t thought of it yet. So if you have any ideas, were always willing to take.

Mayor Nicholson speaks about the details involved in paying attention to each person in the City.

Mayor Nicholson: I mean, yeah. It’s one of those things that if you live here in Gardner, you should feel like you have someone paying attention to you. If you only focus on one demographic or one area of the city or one subset of the population, you’re leaving out so many people and so many stories that make Gardner what it is. If you open a book and you’re missing a page, you’re going to notice it when you’re reading. And that’s what we’re doing here, too. Make sure you’re not missing that page so you’re not missing all of that that’s there. It makes it so you get a more enriched, vibrant, lively and wholesome experience for everyone in the community, not just one person or the other. So we’re constantly thinking, who is missing, who is not at the table. Who haven’t we thought of lately. How can we get them involved and how can we make it so that they feel more at home. And that’s the basis for all of our decisions.

The Gardner Mayor spoke of the process in reviewing the progress regarding recreation in Gardner:

Mayor Nicholson: We like there’ s a group of us that does get together once a month. I mean try to meet with all of my department heads at least once a month in a group of 4. So 1/4 of them are getting together with me every Thursday. And it depends on what quarter is meeting that week to determine when that happens. But what ends up happening in the end is a lot of it comes from public feedback we get. And someone see the project happening somewhere and they be like, that’s great that that project happening there, but how do we get this now. And have you thought about this. Have you thought about that. Thats how the skate park came to be even too, because we never thought about having a skate park at one point in time. And then we got the funding for it. And now we’ve got looking for grants out there to see how we can clean up some of the skate park, and then add on to it. Those are all things that just Its mainly public input that we get So that’s what were constantly asking for Just peoples ideas and feedbacks on what’s going on.