The South Bend Parks & Recreation Department is the recipient of numerous awards from the Indiana Parks & Recreation Association. The awards were presented at the annual state conference held earlier this month on the campus of Purdue University.
Phil St. Clair, Park Department Director, received an award for Outstanding Professional of the Year. St. Clair has served in this position since 1995. The Department of Parks and Recreation has 130 full time and 400+ part time/seasonal employees. He directs staffing, programming, and maintenance at fifty-seven city parks, including the Potawatomi Zoo, Coveleski Stadium, the Eastrace Waterway, two municipal cemeteries, the Belleville Softball Complex, three municipal golf courses, seven recreation centers, a regional maintenance facility, two municipal swimming pools, one skatepark, one greenhouse, one conservatory and over 1200 acres of greenspace are the responsibility the South Bend Parks and Recreation Department.
Prior to his tenure as Department Head of Parks and Recreation, St. Clair served for ten years as Director of Equipment Services for the City of South Bend. Mr St.Clair is currently a member of the Indiana Parks and Recreation Association, and the National Recreation and Parks Association. He serves on the board of regents for the NRPA's Reitz Marketing and Revenue School, currently as the Board Chair. Phil also serves as a member of the South Bend Sports Commission.
A collaboration between Indiana University South Bend and the Department, The IU South Bend Community Connection, received the Outstanding Program Award. This is a powerful partnership program that brings the creative arts to underserved portions of our community. Tying together the talents of The Ernestine M. Racline School of the Arts from I.U.S.B. with the youth of the community recreation centers of the South Bend Recreation Department is an example of a progressive approach to bring performance and culture deeper into our neighborhoods.
The project's focus is to develop arts programming and an arts experience to the youth people of the 2nd district of the City of South Bend. This area has the largest African American and Hispanic populations in the City and it also houses the Charles Black, Sr. and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Recreation Centers. This is an area of our community that might otherwise be underserved with arts programming, and the project is designed for the needs of the residents and careful attention has been paid to provide arts activities on the sites of the two recreation Centers during the hours best suited for the students.
An award for Outstanding Special Projects was given for the Bounce-A-Rama program, recognizing it for creative financing. This program is administered all across the parks network, at schools and several other off-site locations within the Department's area of service. The initial concept was simple: utilize an inflatable "bouncy" structure used to entertain children to enhance various park events. What has grown out of this simple idea demonstrates some interesting and clever revenue-producing strategies, new avenues for reaching new customers not currently being served by the Department, and new services and programs beyond the initial consideration.
Kelly Comer, daughter of Ray Comer, Adult Athletics Supervisor, was named a recipient of a Scholarship for Children of IPRA Members.
For more information on Parks & Recreation Department events, facilities, or programs, call 574.299.4765 or visit www.sbpark.org .
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