Play it safe at South Suburban!

Thank you for being a loyal and supportive patron of South Suburban Parks and Recreation. We appreciate your patience and understanding during our closures due to COVID-19.

South Suburban wants you to play it safe! Several of our facilities are opening in accordance with the Safer at Home guidelines. Learn more at https://www.ssprd.org/Safe-Return

Master and Strategic Plans

We are guided by our 2017 Master Plan and 2017 Strategic Plan - comprehensive, District-wide plans that serve as the foundation of our community-driven vision for the next 10 years.

Master Plan

On May 10, 2017, the South Suburban Board of Directors approved the 2017 Master Plan. The goal of the document, in tandem with an internally-focused Strategic Plan, is to provide prioritized and clear recommendations to guide the District’s decision-making process over the next 10 years.

Our Guiding Principles

The Plan is organized by four guiding principles–broad initiatives describing what we aspire to achieve and that have evolved out of community engagement and recent foundational planning efforts.

The four principles are:  

1. Quality First
2. Enrich Wellness
3. Connect to Nature
4. Lead Sustainability

The Plan expands on these four principles, detailing their meaning, why they’re important, upcoming opportunities, and potential next steps. 

The Plan

To see the Master Plan and its Appendices, click the links below:

SSPRD 2017 Master Plan

Addendum SSPRD 2017 Master Plan - RidgeGate East

Master Plan Appendix A

Master Plan Appendix B

Master Plan Appendix C

Strategic Plan

On June 14, 2017, the South Suburban Board of Directors approved the 2017 Strategic Plan. The 2017 Strategic Plan is an internally-focused document that will help SSPRD identify and address its vision and goals for the next five to ten years. It compares where SSPRD is currently at with these goals and vision and develops a strategy for bridging the gap.

It has been developed as a companion document to the 2017 Master Plan. Like the Master Plan, the Strategic Plan supports a critical opportunity for SSPRD to build off the energy of new leadership, respond to the needs of SSPRD’s diverse communities and envision how the award-winning SSPRD system can find fresh ways to implement its mission and serve the community.

The Strategic Plan identifies our mission, vision, and values, analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the organization, and establishes overarching goals and objectives. This information, collected from public outreach meetings and interviews with staff, will be the basis of our path to excellence as an organization and to what is possible for us to become in the future.

Our Mission

South Suburban Park and Recreation District is a citizen-founded organization with a mission to foster healthy living through stewardship of the environment, parks, trails and open space and by providing recreational services and programs.

Our Vision

South Suburban Park and Recreation District will seek to foster a culture of quality facilities, professional staff, and exemplary services that enhance the quality of life in the communities they serve, now and into the future.

Our Values

  • Professional
  • Active
  • Innovative
  • Inclusive

Our Overarching Goals

The Strategic Plan identifies three overarching goals for SSPRD that reflect the mission, vision, and values, built off of the SWOT analysis, and can be used to implement the four guiding principles identified in the Master Plan.

Each goal is meant to focus SSPRD on achieving a specific outcome within the next five to ten years and has several recommended objectives and “areas of action,” which provide further direction on how the goals can be achieved.

The three overarching goals are:  

  • Embrace Our Guiding Principles - Increase the organizational sustainability of SSPRD to ensure we can serve our communities well into the future
  • Value Our Staff - Increase the organizational sustainability of SSPRD to ensure we can serve our communities well into the future
  • Engage Our Future - Increase the organizational sustainability of SSPRD to ensure we can serve our communities well into the future

The Strategic Plan expands on these three goals, detailing their meaning, why they’re important, upcoming opportunities, and potential next steps.

The Plan

To see the 2017 Strategic Plan and its Appendices, click the links below:

SSPRD 2017 Strategic Plan

Strategic Plan Appendices

Developing the plans

In 2016, the District began working with landscape and urban design consultant, Design Workshop, to develop a master and strategic plan to help guide the District's next 10 years.

Analyzing current resources

To develop an understanding of the key factors impacting SSPRD’s future, the planning team reviewed regional planning efforts, prepared a detailed inventory, analyzed operation and budget documents, prepared research summaries, conducted facility assessments, calculated current and future level of service benchmarks and looked at trends in capacity and programming.

Community input

Starting in the spring of 2016, the Master and Strategic Planning process kicked-off robust community engagement efforts to understand citizen’s recreation needs and interests. Community engagement included online surveys, a statistically valid survey, focus group interviews, Board and staff interviews, two advisory groups composed of citizens and municipal partners, outreach at special events like Sheridan Celebrates and two public meetings (November 10 and 17, 2016). 

Additionally, previous staff and community-led planning efforts, including the 2014 Gold Medal Citizen Report and the 2013-2015 Strategic Plan, provided building blocks for this planning efforts.

Community, municipal and county partner advisory committees provided input at key milestones in the planning process, and the SSPRD Board of Directors participated in strategic meetings and briefings. Beyond this planning process, the SSPRD staff and executive team regularly met and collaborated with municipal and county partners to ensure alignment of needs and investment of available resources.

Describing SSPRD’s intended direction over the next five to ten years, the four guiding principles (Quality First, Enrich Wellness, Connect to Nature, Lead Sustainability) evolved directly out of these planning efforts and community input.

Master Plan adoption

The Master Plan was formally adopted by the South Suburban Board of Directors on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. 

Strategic Plan adoption

The Strategic Plan was formally adopted by the South Suburban Board of Directors on Wednesday, June 14, 2017.

Additional resources