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1—8 Orange County Comprehensive Parks and Recreation Master Plan CHAPTER 1 - Summary of the Plan 1 The creatfon of the Lands Legacy Program in 2000 gave the County a mechanism to not only acquire land for future parks, but the ability to identffy and work to acquire lands for future nature preserves (as well as protect riparian buffer lands, prime and threatened farmland and cultural resource lands – other focus areas for Lands Legacy). One component that is emergent in this master plan, but was identf- fied as a priority as far back as 1999, is the role that nature preserves can play in providing not only protectfon for the County’s most significant natural areas but also the ability for public access in proximity and on the edges of these areas. Over the past 12 years the County has worked to secure important lands within the two nature preserves, and a possible third preserve may exist (working with municipalitfes and UNC). With careful design and ecological sensitfvity, it is possible to provide public access at these nature preserves, buffered from the most-sensitfve natural segments of the site, and plans toward this end are underway. The current best practfce in using park standards to frame park needs is to rely on a community-needs based approach. This involves many of the tools used in this plan, survey and assessment of community desires and preferences, mapping of future known facilitfes and transportatfon networks. This approach is recommended and used for this master plan. However, the mathematfcal populatfon -based standards are recommended to be used periodically as a valuable benchmark or “double- check,” as they may show when a certain type of park need is under-represented at a macro county- wide scale. Similarly, defining park service areas in a rural jurisdictfon is very different than in an urban setting. The master plan uses housing patterns, transportatfon networks, other geographical factors and awareness of the municipal park networks to identffy service areas. As noted in the 1988 master plan, even a diligent set of calculatfons based on populatfon, socioeconomic and transportatfon factors may not include intangibles that affect how residents view which parks serve their needs. In some cases, it is again community needs and preferences that are the true determining factors. The locatfon of future parks in the 1988 plan looked at these populatfon and transportatfon factors, but ultfmately it was the existence of other public lands or natural features that was the real determinant for identffying the general locatfon where district parks should be located, for example. These parks were proposed in 1988 (and later acquired between 2000 and 2007 through the Lands Legacy Program). Maps in Chapter 9 show how a service area radius applied to existfng and planned community parks and district parks would look. Once again, in a county system the awareness of and coordinatfon with planned and existfng municipal parks is a factor that helps define effectfve park service areas. Standards In years past, community parks and recreatfon mas- ter plans would rely heavily on populatfon-based standards to help identffy the number of needed future parks and their locatfons. This approach has fallen from favor in the last 20 years both natfonally and locally, as it often led to a mathematfcally- indicated park need that may or may not fit with actual community needs. For example, a formulaic calculatfon of the number of community parks needed based on populatfon growth might call for parks to be built without confirmatfon or acknowl- edgement from the community about actual needs. 22