Public invited to offer ideas for redesign of Mackle Park

Last July, Goetz & Stropes Landscape Architects of Naples won the $59,500 award to redesign the park. Ellin Goetz set about doing an inventory of Mackle, including topography, drainage, soil, vegetation, lighting, building and paving.

Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Nov. 18 and Nov. 19, she wants to hear from locals.

At Tuesday night's session, Goetz will collect general desires and preferences from Marco Island residents. On Wednesday, the subject will be playground conditions.

Parks and Recreation Director Dana Souza has been working with Goetz and members of the newly created Mackle Park Master Plan Committee -- which meets today for the first time -- to hash out a design outline.

Souza has been researching uses for what has come to be known as the Glon property, almost 7 acres of downtown land that voters will be asked to buy for $9.7 million in a Dec. 9 referendum. Dale Glon owns the property.

Souza said Monday that there's a need for a revitalized Mackle plus a downtown central park, for which the 12 Glon lots would be used.

"We need (the) Glon (property) for some reasons that may not be obvious to some people," Souza said.

Mackle Park has 30 acres, but 15 of them are underwater.

"Water takes up half the park," Souza said. The other half is "very congested."

Speaking from his office in a trailer on the Mackle site, Souza said the place is jumping with activity around 5 p.m.

"The playground is full, the fields are occupied. When we insert into this mix of activities a formal summer concert, that would happen on the basketball court," he said. "If a company wanted to have a large picnic here, it happens on the basketball court."

Events such as A Taste of Marco and Christmas Island Style can't even take place at Mackle, he said.

"Mackle is very busy with day-to-day activities. Bring in a special event, and the day-to-day activities halt, which is why Taste of Marco doesn't happen here," he said. A town center park on the site of the Glon property "would be the best place to host all those events," Souza said.

Goetz & Stropes designed Parque Celestial, a private park in Mediterra, a North Naples gated community. The firm also designed the city of Naples' River Park Community Center.

Former J. Roland Lieber Landscape Architects employees, Goetz and her partner, Jerry Stropes, had a hand in Fifth Avenue South's 1996 streetscape revitalization.

The Mackle renovation is the first major project undertaken by the city's new Park and Recreation Department, created last June and headed up by Souza.

Souza oversees a $1.5 million parks and recreation general budget, plus an additional $1.2 million for capital projects, and a $100,000 recreation enterprise fund.

Up until June, the city paid the YMCA to staff and manage Mackle Park.

Souza was hired in October 2002 as the city's first recreation coordinator, and became the department director last summer.

Before he was hired to run Marco's operations, Souza ran parks programs in New York and Maine.

Souza worked in Union, N.Y., as parks and recreation director, managing 700 acres of parks and programs for 60,000 residents. In Portland, he supervised a $6 million budget with more than 300 employees.

Both meetings start at 6 p.m. at Mackle Park.