My research suggests low development w/ minor enhancements is what our community needs

I’ve read all the comments through 7/11, reviewed the plans and my suggestions are:

• NO amphitheater – revitalize/invest in current civic center park/FS Theater instead. Keep this park more natural/nature park and don’t allow large events
• No more lights/No night lights - where can we go for a dark sky environment nearby? Let’s not make it worse than it already is.
• Keep it a NO MOW or very low-mow park
• NO to an entrance fee for city of Rockville Residents – Provide donation box at the nature center with suggested donation amt for residents and nonresidents earning < or >$40K salary; charge fee for activities; small bday parties with nature education themes
• Stop offsite stormwater movement/Don’t allow more impervious surfaces. When it’s time, remove impervious surfaces with permeable surfaces. Create natural, native landscaped areas promoting onsite groundwater infiltration/stormwater mgmt. – Promote natural infiltration of stormwater. Remove impervious surfaces channeling runoff and stormwater offsite which only promotes flooding of the surrounding areas. Create onsite stormwater infiltration & mgmt.. Rockville and MoCo Gov’t need to do MUCH MORE to prevent current and future flooding that is caused due to the very WRONG practice of allowing building & landowners to channel stormwater offsite. Much more stormwater in developed areas needs to be retained onsite for infiltration. Building owners need to pay to redevelop their sites to allow much more infiltration on their building site. Rockville and MoCo need to regulate when land is developed or redeveloped that their onsite stormwater mgmt. needs to be improved. Less should be allowed to be channeled offsite to become someone else’s flooding problem. Owners must create onsite infiltration areas for stormwater.
  • This is also an opportunity to provide education on reducing flooding in our communities - and how individual homeowners/renters can make a difference by creating onsite infiltration to park visitors who are homeowners/renters and could incorporate what is done at the park to their homes/businesses. Seeing is believing. Measure current outflow. make infiltration improvements and measure outflow after infiltration improvements.
• Yes to Nature Education:
  • Refurbish the clubhouse as nature center/bathroom/water fountain/recycling; provide paper trash bags & encourage users to pick up trash they find around the park.
  • Involve residents in the redevelopment of the park
    • projects to remove nonnative species and replant natives to promote bees, butterflies, and birds, bats, etc.
    • Park attendees can make bird/bat/bee houses to take with them or for the park donation
    • New native-only plantings to block views of commercial buildings and reduce vehicular noise.
    • Add benches and species identification signs; bee, bat and bird houses as appropriate along paths; allow/promote community funding/donations to pay for benches, species identification signs, bat and/or birdhouses “to honor a loved one.” Benches will allow older residents to enjoy nature by giving them opportunities for breaks along a self-guided nature walk and a water fountain and bathroom break at refurbished clubhouse.
  • Self-guided nature tours
• Fun & exercise – A small portion of the park can go to fun and exercise, but 90% should be a natural environment for quiet enjoyment of nature. Best ideas for low maintenance, easy to incorporate fun/exercise areas would be:
• Bike/walking paths - Connect the park to other parks/neighborhoods with ped/bike paths/sidewalks/bridges. Aim to keep these connections so they create one “outer circle/main throughway” so the pedestrians can primarily “own” the majority of the internal paths for non-stressful nature enjoyment. When you are dodging speeding bikes it’s difficult to enjoy nature. Encourage bike riders to walk the park by creating 5 mph speed limit on all the non-throughway paths & putting bike parking by entrances to encourage bikers to park & walk.
• Exercise stations – incorporate exercise stations at the tails/benches. Perhaps local trainers or community organizations or stores that promote/sell bikes, exercise footwear would be willing to “fund a station.” Similar to how people will “donate” a bench or companies “adopt a highway.”
• Allow some picnicking near nature center – NO grills; 5-8 picnic tables; maybe 5-10 more picnic tables scattered around the park. How to avoid trash?? What you bring in, take out.