Elings Park
https://elingspark.org
Award Sponsor: Bartlett, Pringle & Wolf
In every great city there is a community park that serves as its beating heart. Elings Park has been Santa Barbara’s for more than 40 years.
Each year, more than 260,000 children, youth, and adults enjoy sports, outdoor recreation, summer camps, weddings, and special events at this unique site.
“What Central Park is to New York and Golden Gate Park is to San Francisco, Elings Park is to Santa Barbara,” says Dean Noble, executive director of the nonprofit Elings Park Foundation, which operates the park.
As a private nonprofit, the park receives no tax dollars or government support for operations or maintenance. It depends entirely on community support to stay open and admission-free year-round.
What started as 90 acres of scrub and a tennis complex now houses thriving soccer, rugby, kickball, and softball leagues, a BMX bike track, a disk golf course, facilities for both remote control airplanes and cars, and a paraglider training hill.
Cultural performances include a host of festivals and live music, from ballet to bluegrass, and summer stagings by two Shakespeare companies.
Elings Park’s immensely popular summer camp sells out quickly and now includes almost 1,000 children. Seventy-five percent of the park’s 230 acres are undeveloped, with nine miles of trails winding through oak groves and meadows offering sweeping views of the mountains, city, and Pacific Ocean – all the way to the Channel Islands.
Native plant restoration efforts are ongoing, particularly on the park’s South Bluffs, in partnership with the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Your Children’s Trees, and Channel Island Restoration. Invasive trees and plants have been replaced with oak trees and California native perennials, and a one-acre Landscape Transformation Garden has been reclaimed and planted as part of a three-year project.
The dedicated users of the park also include 900 canine members. Owners register their well-behaved canine companions as “EP DOGS” to enjoy the entire park off-leash.
A community fundraising effort has supported improvements to the park’s aging infrastructure, with new walkways, repaved parking lots and roads, handmade stone retaining walls, a permanent entry kiosk, and renovated restrooms at the playing fields. The Las Positas Tennis Center has been completely renovated, and new trails have opened, including one suitable for strollers and wheelchairs.