Parks and Playing Fields

By C. Howell Ellerman

More places to play means happier and healthier families

It's no secret that El Dorado Hills is one of the most prestigious addresses in Northern California. What's not so well known is that we have a dirty little secret: There are not enough recreational facilities to serve the burgeoning families who move here.

It's a shame that a community as affluent, family-oriented and beautiful as this has such inadequate places to play. Most parents of small children spend more time at public parks in Folsom than they do in El Dorado Hills. I think we're lucky Folsom has the kind of standards that have created the number and quality of parks that they have. But it's ridiculous and somewhat embarrassing that we, up the hill with substantially higher household incomes and higher priced housing, have to sneak over the border into another city to find good parks with the kind of water features and innovative play equipment that children delight in. Add to it that our own CSD park is in the middle of an asbestos abatement program, and the recreational opportunities are downright paltry.

Even more important, the largest public recreational property in El Dorado Hills is in private hands and is threatened with destruction. Three years ago the Parker company announced its plans to close the El Dorado Hills Golf Course and develop it with medical offices and a tennis center. Only a huge public outcry postponed their plans. Parker is acting as they could be expected to -- the golf course added value to their entrace to Serrano but is not necessarily a profit making venture in its own right. Parker plans to put a golf course in at Marble Valley as a value-adding amenity. It's natural that they would have less an interest in keeping the EDH course open once Serrano is built out. In fact, they have the opposite incentive, that is, to make Marble Valley a more desirable place than EDH. We, of course, have the opposite interest.

Serrano was given its entitlements with the state minimum standard for recreational facilities. Serrano is one of the best planned and most beautiful communities to be built anywhere in the last decade, but it lacks sufficient recreational space, such as soccer fields, baseball fields, football fields and tennis courts. It would be a shame for those who live there if the open space of the golf course, which is zoned for recreation, were to disappear.

Most people here don't even remember that Cameron Park used to have the Arnold Palmer Golf College and Golf Course where the Bel Air/Goldorado Center is located. Once the developer sold his lots, he sold off the golf course to a retail developer. This is not what we want for our own community -- to see a beautiful and useful gateway golf course be paved over for retail and commercial use, no matter how nice it is. The golf course must stay. More parks must be built, and yes, they must have playing fields and lights. Our families deserve no less than what they can get by scrambling over the border to our neighboring cities.