From guns to dinosaurs, valley parks appeal to many interests

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Feel like taking the dog for a walk? We have parks for that.

Lusting to take to the skies with your radio-control F-16 or burn up the track with your radio-control, scale-model Lotus? We have parks for that, too.

Whether your idea of a great time outdoors is riding a horse or a BMX bike, tearing up the half-pipe on a skateboard or aiming arrows or bits of hot lead at distant targets, there’s a park — sometimes even several parks — in the Las Vegas Valley for you.

Call them specialty parks, these parks where the amenities go way beyond prosaic picnic tables and basketball courts and where Southern Nevadans whose recreational interests fall a bit outside of the usual lines can feel right at home.

Specialty parks can offer residents facilities for activities that would be difficult, if not impossible, to do in their own neighborhoods.

For example, the county’s William Bennett Radio Controlled Airfield, 6800 E. Russell Road, offers a wide-open, uncluttered aerodrome for flying small-scale planes and helicopters. Jim Foreman, principal management analyst for Clark County’s parks and recreation department, noted that flying radio-control planes in the clutter of valley neighborhoods would be both dangerous to neighbors and, for owners of the pricey planes, expensive.

Manny Tiu, who spent a recent afternoon flying his radio-control helicopters at the park, agreed.

The rotors of model copters can spin 2,200 revolutions per minute, he said, so "it’s better for the county to maintain a park like this for the safety of people."

It’s the same with BMX parks. The county’s BMX track "has gone up in use," Foreman said, "and we probably could use another on the other (west) side of town."

Similarly, skateboard parks "came not only from the fact that there isn’t really any safe place for kids to go, but also out of concern that they’re skating in the wrong places — commercial centers and places where that activity is not desirable. So it’s offering them an outlet in a public park, where it’s something that can be controlled and supervised," said Flinn Fagg, Las Vegas’ planning department director.

Like any other parks, specialty parks begin via a planning process that kicks off when a government subdivision decides to build a neighborhood park or a developer plans to build a park for a new residential subdivision.

Government planners take into account, first, national standards that cover, say, "how many basketball courts per X residents or how many tennis courts per X residents," Fagg said.

Planners or developers also may consider "things that are unique that will bring people in," said Jim Stritchko, North Las Vegas parks and recreation manager.

For example, North Las Vegas’ Nature Discovery Park, 2627 Nature Discovery Drive, in Aliante, features not just a man-made lake and waterfall, walking paths and such standard park amenities as a volleyball court, but a dinosaur-themed play and discovery area.

Developers "wanted to create a signature park that’s not only for residents but was something that they could sell homes with, too," said Stritchko, who added that the park is "very popular."

Once a concept is chosen, meetings are scheduled to gather input from the public and determine if there are special needs. That may lead to subbing out planned features for others. "We might put in a soccer field rather than a baseball field," Stritchko said.

The diversity of interests neighborhood residents have can make this part of the process complicated. The goal, however, is to "take care of as many people as you can," Stritchko said.

That certainly would explain the glut of dog parks in the valley. North Las Vegas, Clark County, Las Vegas and Henderson all maintain parks that contain dog-friendly features, and a few parks — Las Vegas’ Barkin’ Basin Park, Clark County’s Dog Fancier’s Park and Henderson’s Bark Park at Heritage Park — cater exclusively to canines.

The five-acre Bark Park, 350 S. Racetrack Road, "is our first freestanding dog park, meaning it’s our first park not nestled in another park," said Kim Becker, communications and marketing supervisor for Henderson’s parks and recreation department. "It was planned specifically to be a dog park."

Dog owners, dog groomers, veterinarians and show dog breeders were among those consulted during the design process, she said, and the facility includes an agility course, dog runs that separate dogs by size and benches shaped like dog bones. It even has its own mascot, "Barkules," depicted in an 18-foot-long, 6-foot-tall play structure.

Yet, specialized parks probably remain best-known only to those who use them. Foreman suspected that "hardly anyone would know that we have a large archery range at the Clark County Shooting (Range).

"When you think about a shooting park, you think guns, you don’t think archery. So that’s something most people never know."

But not every community interest can be satisfied by building a park.

"One of the things we struggle with as a parks department is how many people use the amenity (now) and, in the future, how many people will use it, or should we put our money into something else," Foreman said.

"I get people who want to play bocce ball, but there are only 20 in the group."

Fans of disc golf "always want more disc golf courses," Foreman said, and Stritchko recently heard a request for a lacrosse court.

Fagg once even had a request for "a model railroading facility." But, he said, "we are not able to accomplish that at this time."

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.