On the Boards: Sunflower Park

Our initial concept for Phase One of Sunflower Park:  Visitors enter the park through a monumental gateway directly accessing the parking lot, which will be shared with a future Community Resource Center. Crushed granite trails meander through the park, allowing patrons to either access park amenities or use them as a part of their fitness workout.  The trails will change grades, providing a moderate challenge to a fitness program, yet complying with state and national accessibility standards.  An existing berm on three sides of the park perimeter will be set five feet above grade, with all-weather surface to provide an option for those wishing for a more challenging workout.  

A children's playground has been placed in a central location, for convenience and for supervision.  A Wilderness Hideout Challenger System, which is a nature-themed playground features wood components, a Climber and Tree Toppers; a Challenger System that features two slides, the Horizontal Loop Ladder for upper-body fitness, and a Transfer Station for wheelchair accessibility.

Sunflower Park & Community Resource Center

July 27, 2013 Article by Jared Janes in The Monitor newspaper. Photos by MGa

Hidalgo County Pct. 4 Commissioner Joseph Palacios, center, speaks to the media prior to the ground breaking ceremony for the Sunflower Park Friday July 26, 2013 in San Carlos. The park will provide outdoor play areas and recreational activities for residents of the area.

Rain complicates conditions at the chronically-cramped San Carlos community resource center. When the skies open up, the volunteers who manage its summer program for children must find ways to make the center work with no outdoor options. They divide its available indoor space with curtains and siphon kids off by activity, or they find ways to entertain and educate them as a whole group.

But in a program that already has to turn kids away because of the limitations at the community resource center, those space-saver solutions aren’t the ideal fix, said Veronica Sanchez, a volunteer at the center whose two children are regular attendees. “There’s a lot of parents asking to put (their children) in the program,” she said. “If we could have more space, we would be better off.” They’ll get it now thanks to an expansion of county services in the San Carlos area.

Hidalgo County Precinct 4 broke ground Friday on Sunflower Park, one of two new parks planned for the precinct this year that will expand existing acreage by 400 percent. Located at the intersection of Highway 107 and Sunflower Road, the new park will provide outdoor play space and recreational activities for residents and families in San Carlos. Planned amenities for the park include a pavilion with basketball courts, playground equipment, walking trails and a soccer and baseball field. The park is just the first phase of a series of improvements planned for the area. Precinct 4 will also break ground later this summer on a new community resource center to replace the existing, outdated one that hosts community events for children and their parents.

Hidalgo County Pct. 4 Commissioner Joseph Palacios, center left, and Ernesto Narvaiz, center right, toss dirt during the ground breaking ceremony for the Sunflower Park in San Carlos. The park will provide outdoor play and recreational activities for residents in the  area.

Precinct 4 Commissioner Joseph Palacios said the new park and community resource center are needed improvements for San Carlos, a rural community with about 6,000 residents, making it larger than some of the county’s cities. Palacios said the county is currently under-serving its youth in San Carlos because it can only take in about 35 percent of those who sign up for its summer program. In an impoverished community where many families lack Internet access or even a computer, the community resource center fulfills a fundamental need for San Carlos.

“It’s not just improving the quality of life,” Palacios said, adding that the space will fulfill the needs for now and the immediate future. “It pretty much will be the flagship for their community, the place where they go and take pride in.”

Rendering of the three phases of Sunflower Park. Phase I is in the lower right-hand corner.

Construction costs for the park’s first phase are estimated at $500,000, but the total cost over three phases will be about $1.1 million. The San Carlos community resource center will cost about $1.2 million. Precinct 4 is covering the initial $500,000 cost for the park’s first phase, while funding from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development is slated for the rest.

Once both are completed, it will vastly improve the quality of services in San Carlos, said Alicia Rodriguez, the San Carlos community director for Precinct 4. In addition to the children’s summer program funded entirely by churches and charities and handled by parent volunteers, the community resource center hosts educational courses — helping residents get their GED diploma or learn English — and other special events in San Carlos.

East/Courtyard Elevation * Community Resource Center

North/Courtyard Elevation * Community Resource Center

South Elevation from Hwy. 107 * Community Resource Center

The park will also add a recreational venue for a community that previously lacked those options. “It’s a blessing,” Rodriguez said. “This is going to be a place that will improve our community.”