Parks and trek: Svetz leaves an overhauled Charlottesville
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Mike Svetz at the beginning of his five-year Director of Parks and Recreation term.FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO
After overseeing five years and a handful of hefty overhauls, Charlottesville Director of Parks and Recreation Mike Svetz has stepped down from what has lately become a publicly prominent, and at times controversial, post. The man behind makeovers at McGuffey, Pen— and perhaps most notoriously, McIntire— concluded his tenure as Director on Thursday, January 22, and headed out west to take a Parks and Rec Post in the small town of Goodyear, Arizona.
“The decision was kind of a leap of faith,” says Svetz. “But at the end of the day, it’s an opportunity for me to meld a couple of passions.”
Svetz, a Cleveland native, came to Charlottesville five years ago after spending nearly fifteen years building up a hefty parks and rec resume. Bouncing around Ohio, he headed up several high-budget departments in the towns of Brunswick and Strongville. As parks director in Charlottesville, he continued to shoulder the requests of City Council by proposing and pushing through redesigns that did not always garner widespread popular support.
The post-modern remodeling of McGuffey Park, for example, unleashed opposition from community members who didn’t see the point in putting over a half million dollars into a tiny park which already had fans who liked it as it was. Supporters of the effort, however, praised Svetz for pushing through such an “ambitious design.”
There was also indignation from neighbors over an allegedly over-broad lighting of Pen Park’s tennis courts. Svetz insisted throughout that ordeal that the decision was made by his predecessor, while he merely oversaw the installation of the lights.
However, the Parks and Rec department again roused the wrath of park users when the McIntire Park master plan was announced in May 2008— a plan that included the construction of a YMCA facility at the expense of the park’s two historic softball fields. After months of public hearings in both the city and county, hundreds of petition signatures from McIntire Park users, and a Save McIntire website and campaign, Svetz conceded to taking a second look at the proposed plan— a task now left to his successor.
As the first ever Director of Parks and Recreation for Goodyear, a town to the west of Phoenix, Svetz’s main priority will be in the maintenance and operation of the Cleveland Indians spring training facility and stadium— a task that attracted the baseball fan in Svetz.
“At the age of five, I would fall asleep listening to the Indians play on a transistor radio under my pillow,” says Svetz. “Baseball is near and dear to my heart.”
So near and dear that Svetz says the first rule he went by during his time in Charlottesville was to separate his interests from his job— including the issues with McIntire. Despite his passion for bats and pop flies, Svetz managed to distance his enthusiasm for the sport in favor of bringing to the community the facilities requested in the 2005 needs assessment done by the city.
Hoping for a “win-win” situation in McIntire, Svetz will leave to his replacement a lot of loose ends to tie up. 2009 will see the conclusion of the construction of Meade Park’s aquatic facility, groundbreaking on the Smith Aquatic center at Buford Middle School, and a redesign of McIntire.
“I love Charlottesville,” says Svetz. “I will take away nothing but positives.”
Mike also desires enormous credit for encouraging and facilitating the preservation of the amazing Frances Brand collection of “Firsts,” “outsider” folk paintings of 20th century Charlottesville and Albemarle County notables, now under the stewardship of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, but actually stored in Parks and Recreation facilities.
There seems to be a new generation of progressive and urbane Parks and Recreation professionals who are enlightened enough to conceive of local culture and community-building as part of their job. As I gratefully discovered when I was the director of the “Hysterical Society,” Mike is one of that new breed.
Best of luck to him in his new endeavors!
The idea of the city’s taking ownership of the Frances Brand collection came from the residents. Svetz came in later.
Svetz, a nice person, was utterly taken in by the champions of the Brand collection. Since when does Parks and Recreation have expertise in collecting and preserving art? Ms. Brand was a retired Army intelligence officer who, on a trip to Mexico, discovered in a muralist confirmation of her theory that one need have no talent or training to call oneself an ‘artist.’ But there are certain advantages of offering to paint portraits of prominent locals, including instant entrée and dinner invitations. So she flounced around town in purple, and lived the joyous life of a bohemian ‘artiste’ (supported by a pension–she sold nothing), and more power to her. Everybody should have a hobby. Just don’t ask me to pay for it or have to look at the results. The collection is ‘art’ which was turned down when offered to an auction house for being unable to attract a bid–acrylic on cardboard ‘art’ even the bottom-feeding junk dealers who deal in big eyed kittens on black velvet considered worthless. But Svetz was too nice, or too savy, to say no when well connected former politicians whose portraits had been painted, are the ones doing the asking. Consequently somewhere in the basement of a city gym, molders cardboard daubed with images recognizable sometimes as caricatures of locals, more often not recognizable, unnamed, unknown. Taxpayer subsided cardboard since City Council was asked to fund half the cost of preserving the disintegrating cardboard, and ALL the cost of storing it. Forever. Mike Svetz (who really is a good guy and will be missed)–good luck and happiness to you in your new job out West. Are you anywhere near the Yucca Mountain Waste Storage facility? And do you have room in your truck. . . ?