Police Chief David Westrick lauded upcoming park improvements as “awesome” and envisioned a possible turnaround for Park Hill in particular with a new playground structure on the way, more cleanup work and increased patrols.
Hollister council members Monday approved spending $140,000 in park-development funds to go with a $102,000 grant from the company providing three new playground structures for Park Hill, Las Brisas Park and Jerry Gabe Memorial Park at the airport.
Westrick said he is “sold” on the relationship between more attractive parks and less crime, after seeing it firsthand at Las Brisas Park a couple of years ago when a neighborhood watch group led efforts to fix up that attraction off of Clearview Drive.
Westrick said a better looking park, combined with added patrols, helped to reduce the incidence of crime “overnight” in that area.
“And it really worked there,” he said. “I’m kind of sold on it. If you’ve got a place that looks like people care about it and there are active community members there to clean it up, it’s wonderful.”
Westrick said the Park Hill neighbors have “banded together” in the last year and started their own neighborhood watch. He believes the community can “reinvigorate” that park with the new play structure, “a little more attention” from police and more maintenance. He mentioned there have been cleanup projects at the park two years in a row.
Still, it maintains a reputation as a park where many homeless people congregate and where some criminal activity occurs. Recently, there were four fires in the Park Hill area over a two-month span with arson suspected in each case.
Westrick said it was a cherished park about two decades ago and needs more than the benches up there now. The city five years ago approved a Park Hill Master Plan after taking community input, but hasn’t had the money until this point to move ahead on related projects. A new playground structure, though, was one piece identified in the park master plan.
“We need to have something up there to enjoy,” he said. “Right now, it’s a park. There’s no attraction.”
