A Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Master Plan (PROS Plan) is a comprehensive document that outlines the long-term vision, goals, and strategies for the development, enhancement, and management of parks, recreational facilities, and open spaces within a specific jurisdiction.

This type of plan identifies current and future needs of the community, conducts an extensive inventory and analysis of existing conditions, establishes clear goals and strategies for improvement, recommends specific actions that the jurisdiction can take in the short and long term, and presents implementation pathways. These plans are essential for guiding decision-makers in allocating resources, prioritizing projects, and ensuring that the community's recreational needs are met in a thoughtful and strategic manner. The shared vision set forth in the plan is used to establish and align future projects, programs, and initiatives to support the overall mission of improving the quality of life in the community.

The City’s 2035 General Plan, adopted in 2017, called for a revised PROS Plan to replace the previous 1992 version. The updated PROS Plan serves as a roadmap for the improvement of Belmont’s parks, recreation programs, and open spaces over a 15-year horizon.

As a mostly built-out City, identifying opportunities to expand recreational and park amenities requires an in-depth review of housing and commercial development, population and demographic projections, existing and future land use, recreational usage and trends, emerging technologies that benefit the visitor experience, and many other topics that impact the City and region as a whole. The PROS Plan integrates existing park master plans to contextualize the previous and ongoing planning efforts that will enhance, preserve, and maintain Belmont’s parks and outdoor amenities now and into the future.

Belmont is committed to the health and wellbeing of its residents and deeply understands the relationship between public green spaces and quality of life. Similar to all jurisdictions in California, Belmont must proactively prepare for population growth over the coming decades, ensuring that the needs of current residents are met while preparing for the unique and evolving needs of future generations. “Let’s Build Our Backyard” frames the entire park system as a common outdoor space that offers opportunities for play, exercise, and gathering for all residents equally. By thinking about the city as a whole, the PROS Plan goes beyond what is physically in a park or open space boundary to contemplate how and why visitors enjoy these spaces. This framing considers how people travel to, from, and in between parks and what that journey is like—is there a park within a 10-minute walk of all Belmont residents? Are amenities and recreation opportunities available equally between neighborhoods? The PROS Plan was a collaborative effort, in which the community considered these questions and more to craft a collective vision for how best to Build Our Backyard.

The PROS Plan is broken into three parts:

Part I. Where We Are

Part II. Where We Want To Be

Part III. How We Get There

The first part sets the stage—it defines what a PROS Plan is and why we need one, analyzes demographics within the community, summarizes previous and related planning efforts, and conducts an in-depth inventory and assessment of existing parks and amenities within Belmont.

The second part turns to the community—it summarizes the community engagement process and its findings, organizes the common themes that emerged, compares our PROS system to others in the area to set quantitative goals, reviews national and local recreation trends, and compiles a shared vision for the future of parks and recreation opportunities in Belmont.

The third part looks to the future—it crafts a strategic approach to realize this vision, recommends system-wide and park-specific enhancements, identifies methods to preserve and protect Belmont’s valuable open spaces, highlights new opportunities and partnerships, and outlines a framework to assess implementation priorities as resource availability and community preferences shift over time.

Belmont’s open spaces are unique and valuable resources on the San Francisco peninsula. Their preservation, restoration, and ongoing management are a priority for the City and its residents. A professional assessment of the two open spaces—Waterdog Lake and San Juan Canyon—was conducted to document environmental conditions and recreational uses. A comprehensive analysis of data collected in the field, peer-reviewed literature, geospatial information, and regional best management practices were used to craft recommendations that address concerns related to trail erosion, vegetation, wildlife habitat, wildfire hazards, and conflicting visitor uses. A full discussion of Belmont’s open spaces is included in the Open Space Management Plan (OSMP), which directly informed the development of the PROS Plan, and can be found in its appendix. The OSMP also outlines assessment methodologies and regulatory backgrounds; presents the full data tables and research maps used for the analysis; identifies strategies to balance recreational use, public safety, and natural resource management; and establishes priorities for implementation.

To date, the City has installed new trail signage, closed trail segments, developed a visitor etiquette message, and worked with volunteers for trail maintenance (including drainage improvements, bridge replacement, revegetation, and removal of environmental species). The OSMP intends to both support the continuation of these efforts and identify new ones that are impactful, feasible, responsible, and aligned with current scientific research and principles.

The community was critically important to identifying opportunities that are unique to Belmont. Throughout the PROS planning process, the project team gathered feedback from an online survey, hosted focus groups and stakeholder meetings, organized pop-up and open house events, and presented project updates at public meetings such as Parks and Recreation Commission, Planning Commission, and City Council. The collected data relates to topics such as the frequency and reason for visiting parks, likes and dislikes about the spaces, and preferences for future improvements. Community members also provided their comments by submitting emails to City Councilmembers, Parks and Recreation Commissioners, and the project team (info@belmontprosplan.com). Additionally, the PROS planning process included the development of an advisory committee. The advisory committee consisted of 18 engaged individuals representing a unique cross section of the City’s neighborhoods, interests, ages, and backgrounds. The advisory committee met five times during the PROS planning process to review information, ask questions, and provide input to the project team.

Overall, the unique contributions from the Belmont community informed the strategies and recommendations proposed in the plan. For example, community members pointed out opportunity sites and offered proposed uses for undeveloped parks. The following ten common themes emerged throughout the outreach process:

1. Amenities for social and physical activity

2. More seating opportunities

3. Physical connections

4. Amenities for diverse interests

5. Accessible for all abilities

6. Create more with less

7. Connecting with nature

8. Available for many uses and users

9. Natural resources

10. Honor Belmont’s unique landscapes

The PROS Plan integrates existing master plans, specifically the Twin Pines Master Plan (2019) and the Belmont Community Center Conceptual Design Plan (2020), to ensure our work recognizes and compliments previous, ongoing, and future efforts to improve parks and recreation facilities throughout the city. Additionally, the PROS Plan incorporates recommendations from broader guiding documents such as the 2035 General Plan, the Belmont Village Specific Plan, and the Comprehensive Pedestrian and Bicycle Plan. The PROS Plan overlapped with the development the 2023-2031 Housing Element—a crucial piece of the General Plan—that sets forth policies and programs to address the City’s existing and future housing needs. The PROS Plan and the 2023-2031 Housing Element are concurrent efforts to inventory and assess opportunity sites to strategically and equitably plan for Belmont’s future. The PROS Plan is similar to the Housing Element in that both will be continuously revisited over the coming decades to ensure that their strategies and policies are aligned with City goals and reflect the needs of the community.

Yes, the PROS Plan includes athletic fields and amenities that are available to the public through joint-use agreements with local schools. The plan reviews these sites individually as well as through the lens of the entire PROS system, recommends specific improvements to enhance the visitor experience, and identifies potential future collaborations to expand the community’s access to green outdoor space.

Given that there are only a few undeveloped parcels in Belmont suitable for park development, the PROS Plan prioritizes improvements to existing parks to better serve the community now and into the future. That said, the PROS Plan does suggest sites that may be suitable for future parks and recreation offerings. This includes potential joint-use agreements with local schools, improvements to sites already designated as undeveloped parks, and entirely new opportunity sites that would strategically increase city-wide access to valuable outdoor amenities and natural spaces.

The City aims to collaborate with housing and commercial developers to offer more parkland in response to the latest Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA)—established by the California Department of Housing and Community Development—specifically on the east side of Belmont. The City will continue to seek opportunities to activate smaller and non-traditional spaces, throughout the jurisdiction, to maximize underutilized land and further balance Belmont’s natural and built environments. Contingent on funding availability, the implementation pathway to realizing these opportunities considers how capital improvements are prioritized, the resources required for ongoing maintenance and operations, and the possibility of new funding sources such as grants. Future park development or rehabilitation projects will involve a robust community engagement process to confirm that the recommendations in the PROS Plan are still aligned with the preferences and priorities of Belmont as they evolve over time.

The PROS Plan is a guiding document that will be revised continuously, approximately every five years. A key merit of the PROS Plan is that it crafts a prioritization approach that defines important criteria, establishes a quantitative point system, and offers a ranking calculation for individual improvements as well as entire parks. This approach is iterative, meaning that the exercise can be repeated often as the inputs change over time. The ranked priorities in the PROS Plan are a snapshot in time and will certainly fluctuate, as some projects fall lower on the list and others rise to the top. The City is committed to re-assessing priorities regularly, and always welcomes the community’s feedback on what improvements would be most impactful in their neighborhoods.

This latest version of the PROS Plan is under review with the Parks and Recreation Commission. The community is invited to review and bring public comments to the next Commission meeting on February 7th, 2024. The PROS Plan and the attached OSMP, as well as the EIR Addendum, are in the final draft stage. The latest revisions focused on streamlining the document for clarity, consistency, readability, and visual layout but did not change the strategies and recommendations that make up the core of the plan.