Indio residents want more shade, walking paths for sports park’s next phase, as city plans more lighting, restrooms

The Indio Community Services Commission reviewed survey results at their meeting on Tuesday from a two-week outreach effort conducted July 29 through Aug. 14 on the city’s social media platforms and in paper form.

When asked to name their single highest priority, 30% of respondents pointed to more shade, trees and landscaping. Roughly a 25% favored more walking, biking and fitness amenities or more sports and recreation opportunities, while 17% wanted more family-friendly spaces.

About 60% of respondents said they had visited the park at least once, and 92.7% identified themselves as city of Indio residents.

Donn Uyeno, the city’s principal civil engineer, said they received more than 550 responses, “Usually, cities that I’ve worked for you’d see in the low two hundreds,” calling the response total “fantastic.” He said the high share of local respondents showed the feedback reflected the community rather than outside visitors.

Indio Sports Park opened in May on a 30-acre site on Market Street, but the second phase of the project has remained unfunded after the city did not receive a state grant it had been counting on. City staff have said they are pursuing another grant while also weighing interim improvements funded through the current fiscal year’s budget.

The commission voted Tuesday to recommend that the City Council approve roughly $1.5 million in interim improvements at Indio Sports Park, including new sports lighting, an additional restroom building, shade structures and a temporary maintenance yard.

The largest component is $450,000 to install six additional light poles around the soccer fields, expanding nighttime play. Conduits for those lights was already installed during the park’s original construction, but the poles themselves were left out after the project received less grant funding than expected. Because the wiring infrastructure is already in place, Uyeno said the lights could be installed relatively quickly once the poles, foundations and fixtures are purchased. Each pole costs about $75,000.

A prefabricated restroom building near the soccer fields is budgeted at $650,000. Plumbing, electrical and sewer connections have already been run to the site. Uyeno described the structure as a permanent building assembled from prefabricated wall components rather than built through typical construction, which he said would speed up installation.

“We heard loud and clear through the feedback that the restrooms are not enough, and it should be closer to the soccer fields,” Uyeno said.

Shade structures throughout the park’s first phase are budgeted at roughly $350,000, with priority placement over the bleachers and dugouts of the baseball fields, areas the civil engineer said were identified as heavily exposed to sun.

The final project is a $40,000 temporary maintenance yard along Avenue 44, on city-owned property between a park walkway and an adjacent shopping center parking lot.

The combined cost of the four projects exceeds the $1 million already budgeted for the park this fiscal year. The civil engineer said the city manager indicated the difference would be covered using reserves from the city’s capital projects fund.

Staff selected the four projects because they could be completed quickly using infrastructure already in place, while a full second phase of the park moves through a separate, longer-term process, including a grant application due at the end of August.

The survey results are expected to inform an upcoming citywide parks master plan, which will include additional opportunities for community input specific to the sports park’s second phase.

The city plans to move forward with a separate grant application for phase two by the end of August, using the survey data to help make the case for funding.

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