Robert McMahon, the superintendent of the Providence parks system, is a 22-year veteran of the city Parks Department. He is in charge of more than 100 neighborhood parks, including Roger Williams Park, its zoo and botanical center, as well as the downtown river walk and ice-skating rink. He manages a staff of 170 full-time and seasonal workers, and oversees an annual budget of more than $8 million. He recently spoke with Providence Business News about his department’s work to maintain the parks and the city’s plan to build new soccer fields.
PBN: What is the most important part of your job as superintendent of the Providence Parks Department?
MCMAHON: I would say the most important part is remembering that all of our employees in the parks department are public servants and that customer service is really the business we are in. It’s not just about cutting grass or picking up litter or building playgrounds, it’s customer service.
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PBN: How do you balance the needs of the parks in the city’s various neighborhoods?
MCMAHON: We give equal attention in terms of maintenance to all of the parks, we have our maintenance crews split up by different areas of the city and each maintenance crew has the same number of parks to care for. But it’s a struggle because in some parks we get vandalism, we get excessive litter, and the users of the park are not as gentle with the park as in other neighborhoods. We try to make sure, in those parks, that we have additional help in the form of our seniors program that we have every summer. We hire senior citizens, who will be starting [the week of June 23] and working through Labor Day, to pick up trash in those parks that get heavy usage. They work two hours a day, five days a week. Anyone over 55 is eligible to work in the program. We have about 25 of our really heavy-use parks where seniors go to them every day in the summer to make sure the litter is picked up.
PBN: How important are volunteers to your operation?
MCMAHON: We have to make sure we don’t use volunteers to substitute for our regular employees because, over the years as we’ve lost positions, it really isn’t fair to our employees to have volunteers taking their place. But we’ve built several major playgrounds in the city using volunteers who work side by side with our union employees, and that’s worked out very well. We also have been collaborating with community groups to help us pay for new facilities in the parks, various groups have raised money and that’s terrific. We definitely as the years have gone on want to establish more of those community partnerships because when neighborhood residents are involved with their parks, those parks are used more and they’re cared for more by the neighbors.
PBN: What special projects are you and the parks department working on for the future?
MCMAHON: We have a new park that is going to be developed in the downtown waterfront, as part of the [Interstate] 195 relocation. When that old highway goes down, it’s going to be freeing up some land down there, so we’re going to be working with the state Department of Transportation to draw up a new waterfront park there and that will be the last segment of the river-walk system in downtown Providence. It’s probably about four years away. The design probably will start later this year.
As part of that project, there’s going to be land freed up on the east side of the river and what we’re hoping to do is work with DOT to use the old pilings or stanchions from Route 195 that already exist in the water to help develop a pedestrian bridge over the river. So that bridge would connect these two new parks and you could do a nice walk as you go up one side of the river, cross the pedestrian bridge, and come back on the other side. It’ll be great for downtown to have that. There’ll be a bigger park on the west side of the river [the new waterfront park] and a smaller park on the east side.
Another thing that’s happening is, as DOT finishes the Route 195 project, you’ll finally get access again to India Point Park. It’s sort of been isolated from the rest of the city during the construction, so we’re looking forward to that reopening later this fall and next spring, and there’s been a lot of improvement to the park as a result of the Route 195 project.
The biggest thing is a new pedestrian ramp over Route 195 that connects the Fox Point neighborhood. The big, urgent need in the city is for more soccer fields, we have simply not enough. We’ve renovated two soccer fields in the past two years, but we need to find more space and develop more capacity for soccer fields. That’s a big priority of the mayor [David N. Cicilline] and that’s something he really wants us to focus on.
A lot of our fields are in tough shape because they play soccer three seasons of the year, so we’re hoping to develop a couple of synthetic-turf fields later this year that will take some of the pressure off our regular turf fields. We have eight soccer fields in the city, but we could probably use 12 or 14. •
interview: Robert McMahon
POSITION: Superintendent of the Providence Parks Department
BACKGROUND: Before he was named superintendent in May, McMahon was deputy parks superintendent since 1986 and in that capacity he managed the design and construction of more than 70 neighborhood park improvement projects, including construction of the African exhibits at Roger Williams Park, establishment of the Fox Point Community Garden and renovation of the Menagerie building. He previously served for four years as the first executive director of Keep Providence Beautiful.
EDUCATION: B.A. in political science, Brown University, 1968; master’s degree in city planning from the University of Rhode Island, 1974.
RESIDENCE:
Providence
AGE: 61
