Forgotten no more: Park improvements are coming to west-side neighborhood

Most of us won’t ever drive by Hayward Elementary unless it’s on purpose.

Take 12th Street west. Pass Interstate 29. Pass Marion Road. It’s an industrial area — probably not the kind of place you’d be looking for an elementary school.

Then head north, cross a set of railroad tracks, go another couple of blocks, and you’ll find it.

“It’s very much an underserved neighborhood. It’s a forgotten neighborhood,” said Steve Hildebrand, founder of the nonprofit Promising Futures Fund.

In Hildebrand’s case, the school found him.

Shortly after he formed Promising Futures, which is dedicated to helping the 14 schools in the Sioux Falls School District with the highest rates of poverty, a staff member in Hayward’s office called him with an urgent request.

“You have to help us figure out how to get new playground equipment because the equipment we have is so old it’s dangerous for kids, and we don’t even want the kids to play on it,” she told him.

In many schools, new playground equipment is the sort of thing the parent-teacher organization might fund.

That can’t happen here, principal Derek Maassen said.

“We don’t have a PTO. There are a lot of hardworking parents here that simply don’t have time. They’re working nights. They’re working all the time. And they trust us to do what we can for their kids.”

So, in late 2019, Hildebrand and his nonprofit starting working on the playground request. And that’s when they realized they needed to think bigger.

What happened next

This wasn’t just about finding new playground equipment for the more than 600 kids of Hayward Elementary.

It needed to be about improving the neighborhood where they are growing up.

So Hildebrand reached out to Mayor Paul TenHaken’s office and found an ally.

They talked about improvements to Hayward Park, which is adjacent to the school, the attached community center, the delivery of health care to the students and the accessibility of libraries.

And things started happening.

“Everything was put on the table. How can we make improvements to the lives of kids in this school and the people in that neighborhood?” Hildebrand said.

“Then COVID hit.”

But they didn’t stop. Meeting virtually in the spring, the decision was made to focus on Hayward Park because the school district agreed to put in new playground equipment at the school, with a contribution from the city.

“They brought it in big and small pieces and laid it on the playground before they could install it,” said Maassen, who acknowledges he was “a little worried about vandalism.”

He didn’t need to be.

“Nothing was taken. It laid there two weeks. Everybody knew that’s the new playground, and nobody messed with it,” he said.

The kids “are constantly on it,” he said. “Even now (in the middle of winter). It hasn’t really slowed down. As soon as it was up, they were on it.”

The park is “not on any kind of main street. It’s not where anyone goes,” Hildebrand said. “So you don’t know there’s this park that exists, and you don’t know it sits empty.”

Truthfully, there’s not much reason to visit Hayward Park today. It has a couple of soccer goals, a picnic shelter, a small amount of aging play equipment and what’s known as a teaching garden.

“It lacked a lot of identity. When we surveyed people, they didn’t realize it’s a park space,” said Don Kearney, who leads the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“The mayor reached out to us and said, ‘This is a neighborhood park in an area of town I really think could use a shot in the arm.’ And it’s been a fun project.”

The school reached out to parents and asked for ideas about what could be added to the park.

“They were so excited,” Maassen said. “They feel a little forgotten tucked up here away in the northwest corner. They have Legacy Park across the street, but there’s nothing for kids to do and that kept shining through.”

Many of these parents spend their days building cabinetry, processing meat, working on landscaping. Their families live in the nearby mobile home developments or apartments. There isn’t a lot of space to play. It’s not a place that lends itself to taking walks.

The nearest swimming pool is almost three miles away at Kuehn Park, and “in order to walk there, there’s a lot of barriers. From the railroad tracks to the tank farm, it’s a lot to maneuver if you’re walking or biking.”

During the summer, when the fire department lets kids run through water from fire hydrants, “it’s packed with kids,” Maassen said. “I got to see it, and there were tons and tons of kids.”

The parks department found 8 percent of Hayward residents had gone swimming in the past year, compared with 12 percent citywide.

It also found 49 percent of Hayward residents have a dog, compared with 41 percent citywide.

“Many of these children have dogs they love, and I don’t know where the closest dog park is,” Maassen said.

Creating a plan

By the end of 2020, the city had put together a master plan for Hayward Park.

Here are some of the highlights:

A water-based recreation feature

The plan would add a splash pad with interactive fountains and play features.

“To have some water-based play is probably the home run, very similar to what we did at Pioneer Spray Park several years ago. It was hugely popular, and we think this one will be too,” Kearney said.

A large walking loop

Formal walking loops are very popular in other parks, the city said. They serve all ages, encourage physical activity and help connect features within the park.

For a neighborhood without a lot of sidewalks to help get around, it likely will be used often.

A dedicated off-leash dog park

“People in mobile homes have dogs. They don’t have yards to run in. Often, they’re rescues and have aggression issues and need exercise,” Hildebrand said.

“And neighbors meet each other in dog parks. It’s really important to get these neighbors to talk to each other.”

An expanded community garden

The neighborhood is “identified as a food desert,” Kearney said.

“There’s a teaching garden there, so we’re transitioning it to more of a community garden, so people can grow their own produce and have better access to farm-to-table type of food.”

A unique play feature

This could be a fitness-based recreational obstacle course or a climbing or gravity-based play structure, but the idea is to add something distinctive to replace the older, more traditional play equipment.

Compared to how long many similar public improvement plans and projects take, this one is moving at a rapid pace.

“I’m really impressed by the parks department taking it on,” Maassen said. “They looked at it and said ‘It’s needed and we’re going to do it.’ And it’s just been amazing to watch how fast it all came together. No red tape. It just moved so quickly I can’t thank them enough for making this a priority and making it happen.”

Smaller improvements such as additional lighting will be big difference-makers too, Hildebrand said.

“It’s one of the most low-income neighborhoods in the city,” he said. “There’s a lot of transitional residents, a lot of rentals, but it’s not a bad neighborhood. There’s some crime, but it’s not horrible. And part of what this will do is hopefully inspire people to be better neighbors, to take more care of their own property because they know there are other improvements taking place.”

To get involved

Paying for all the proposed improvements to the park will cost more than $2 million. Pending funding, design could be finished this year with construction starting next year. The city is proposing to fund about three-quarters of it, if the City Council approves. So you can always voice your thoughts to the City Council by contacting members here.

Leadership Sioux Falls, a program through the Greater Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce to help develop emerging leaders in the community, has decided to tackle the new playground equipment for the park as its project for the current session, which involves raising $100,000. And Promising Futures plans to raise another $100,000.

“We’re looking for the community to consider supporting it,” Hildebrand said. “We’re looking very clearly for this to be a public-private partnership. And it will be transformational for this neighborhood.”

You can contribute through a fund at the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation. You also can email steve@promisingfuturesfund.org to become connected to the effort.