City Of Charleston Parks & Recreation Master Plan

Surculus joined the multi-disciplinary team tasked with evaluating the City of Charleston’s existing Parks & Recreation programs and facilities and developing a Master Plan for maintaining and growing them into the future. Careful consideration of Charleston’s historic landscape, the City’s rapid growth and evolving demographic, and the potential to address flooding and other resilience issues within public properties was crucial to the success of this project. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic during project initiation and the subsequent ban on large public gatherings in the City of Charleston required the project team to adjust its strategy. In addition to an online survey and social media push, the team thought it crucial to engage with active facility users through in-person outreach within City of Charleston Parks and Recreation facilities. The goal of this effort was primarily to reach a more diverse group of community members who may not have access to or knowledge of online forums.

City staff and the project team identified 19 key locations across the six Charleston regions to conduct in person surveys. These site visits, conducted by Surculus, were scheduled to capture known active times at each facility and published to encourage community members to participate. We presented the process at the annual SC AIA/ASLA Built, Fast! event as a series of animated renderings to inform other practitioners of lessons learned in the engagement process. Slides from that presentation are featured below.