A Look at Henry County’s New Parks Master Plan

Henry County has adopted its first parks master plan in fifty years. The plan identifies areas to not only improve existing parks, but also build new parks.

Henry County hired Perez Planning + Design in 2023 to assemble the parks master plan. The board approved the plan at its August 20, 2024 meeting.

The Henry County Parks Master Plan

Perez Planning started work last spring to develop the county’s master plan. They worked extensively with county staff throughout the process. The consultant also hosted town halls and conducted an online survey to hear from residents. All of this input collectively helped to form the future plan for Henry County Parks & Recreation.

Available Park Land

Presently, the amount of available park land is below the national average. Right now, Henry County owns 5.3 acres of park land per one-thousand residents. This increases to 5.7 acres when adding the city-owned parks. The national average is 14.6 acres.

If one includes land owned by Henry County Water Authority, then the value jumps to 15.8 acres per thousand residents. The master plan recommends Henry County expand its partnership with the water authority to incorporate more of their property into park space.

Park Plan Recommendations

The parks master plan completed a comprehensive look at existing county parks and facilities. It also identified areas of the county where to build new facilities. Over the next ten years, the plan estimates $136 million will be available for new projects. It then divides this funding into four categories: improve the existing parks, develop new parks, build trails to connect the parks, and acquire new park land. How much funding each category will receive is based on feedback collected during the plan.

Improve Existing Parks

The plan is recommending thirteen (13) existing parks for improvements. They are the following:

• Heritage Park
• JP Moseley Park & JP Moseley Recreation Center
• Richard Craig Park
• Village Park
• Hidden Valley Park
• Nash Farm Park
• Tanger Station
• Gary Barham Park
• Locust Grove Recreation Center
• North Mt. Carmel Park
• Avalon Park
• Cochran Park
• Sandy Ridge Park

Some examples of the work include new playgrounds, new outdoor trails, concession stand and restroom building renovations, and sports fields upgrades. The map below has a detailed look at the recommendations for each park.

Develop New Parks & Acquire New Park Land

The map above also shows the recommendations for new parks. There are five recommendations to acquire park land and two recommendations to develop new parks / facilities. The latter builds off the first.

The recommendations for new park land includes the following:

• acquire park land within the southwest and southeast portions of the county for future regional parks — a regional park can be 200 acres or larger,
• purchase park land in the general vicinity of Pate’s Creek Elementary School for a future community park — community parks are 20–40 acres, and
• acquire land to expand Nash Farm Park and Gary Barham Park.

Finally, the plan recommends building the first 25 acres of the new regional park in southwest Henry County. Secondly, it recommends building a new indoor center at Heritage Park.

Paying for the Plan

The upcoming SPLOST VI program, if voters approve it, has $20.4 million for park improvements. SPLOST VI is on the November 2024 ballot. This funding would be a start to implement the projects discussed above. SPLOST funding may pay for capital projects only; it may not go towards staff or maintenance.

Presently, Henry County lags behind its peers on parks funding. Henry County spends $29.33 per capita on parks & recreation. By comparison, the median expenditure for parks departments serving 250,000 or more residents is $54.62. Similarly, the county parks department has less staff compared to other large agencies. Henry County Parks & Recreation has 2.1 full-time equivalent employees per 10,000 residents. The median for large population departments is 4.9 FTEs per 10,000.

Parks staff and maintenance are paid for through a combination of general fund dollars and usage fees. The master plan found 65% of survey respondents expressed a willingness to pay $10–25 more per year for parks funding.

Notes

Please note that trail projects are not on the above map. Henry County adopted a trails master plan in 2022. More information about the trails plan is available on the county website.

The final parks master plan will be available soon. It is about three-hundred pages in length. A draft of the master plan was made available before the August 20 county commissioners meeting. For those interested, it is available on the county’s meeting website.

Featured image shows a map of the parks master plan recommendations. Clayton Carte / MHF News map created with Google MyMaps.