CP CASE STUDY
Castle Rock, CO
Community Voice Helps Castle Rock, Colorado
Plan 225-Acre Park
“When CivicPlus came out with
Community Voice, they were
advancing the current nature of
Reaching Out
Castle Rock, Colorado is a lively community. With 3.5 million people within a 30-minute drive,
keeping people entertained has become part of the town’s culture. From watching bucking
broncos to painting pottery, live theater and mountain biking, Castle Rock is known for its events,
parks and open space.
social media, which is to have a
conversation with your residents.”
Karen McGrath,
Community Relations Officer
Castle Rock, CO
With so much activity, keeping residents and visitors informed and involved are top priorities for
the town. Castle Rock’s website, www.crgov.com designed and developed in partnership with
CivicPlus, has become a powerful two-way communications platform that is integral to the town’s
community engagement initiatives.
“CivicPlus has great application modules in their arsenal,” said Karen McGrath, community
relations creative services supervisor for the Town of Castle Rock. “We want our residents to be
engaged and we also want to be accessible.”
With a 225-acre park being planned for development that may take a decade or more, Castle Rock
needed to tap the imaginations of its residents and obtain community input on an unprecedented
scale. With an active social media structure already in place, the town saw CivicPlus’ Community
Voice module as another way to stimulate conversation and encourage feedback.
“When CivicPlus came out with Community Voice, they were advancing the current nature of social
media, which is to have a conversation with your residents,” McGrath said.
The new Philip S. Miller Park will be the largest in the town of Castle Rock. The final design for the
park publicly kicked off in February 2012 with two open houses and the online Community Voice
portal to gather community input on potential activities that could be developed to attract regional
interest.
CONNECTING PEOPLE
CP Case Study
888.228.2233
[email protected]
317 Houston Street, Suite E, Manhattan, KS 66502
CP CASE STUDY
Castle Rock, CO
“Parks and recreation are huge in this town,” said Kristin Accola, Castle Rock’s management analyst. “It’s one of those quality of life benefits that
our residents absolutely love.” Since Castle Rock will be working on the park for a long time, town officials felt that anything they could do to get as
much feedback as possible would be vital to the project.
“Our community has a lot of busy people, and in-person events aren’t always the best way to reach our audience,” Accola added. “Community
Voice allows us to post online all the questions our park development team wants to explore. Our park staff and consultants embraced it right
away.”
Collaboration
Castle Rock created 10 different topics, each with their own set of “ideas” ranging from two to 12 ideas per topic. “There are a lot of different
ideas, a lot of acres, a lot of ground to cover… and we wanted to ask people what they are interested in,” McGrath explained. “Are you interested
in a climbing wall? Do you want a water park? Amphitheaters, architectural character, camping, cultural life events, sports, courts and fields… We
were able to post all those questions with information about each option and have people engage in conversations about it.”
News releases and invitations publicizing Castle Rock’s meetings on the park design encouraged people who could not attend to go to the
dedicated area of the website, sign in and create an account to “tell us how you feel.”
Castle Rock Parks and Recreation staff worked with a consultant to make sure the handouts and feedback tools used at the community open house
mirrored the online Community Voice survey. “The materials they created for the open house events had the same thumbs up, thumbs down and
ability to comment as the Community Voice module,” Accola said. “So the report they generated for Town Council blended the data from the
in-person open houses with the data we received from Community Voice. In both venues, people commented on what they were most passionate
about.”
At the end of the design input phase, online participation via Community Voice nearly equaled that of the in-person open houses. Online, the topic
of “sports, courts and fields” received 125 votes and 33 comments on the 11 ideas listed within the topic.
“Let’s put that into perspective,” McGrath said. “Getting 125 online votes is like having 125 people walk into your meeting and cast a vote. We
made it easier for residents to give us their opinion without having to get in a car, drive, schedule someone to watch their kids, or figure out if they
need to leave work early. We made it easier for the residents to talk with us. And that’s what I think is so important about this module.”
Accola added, “Community Voice fits our entire online philosophy, which is to reach people in the manner they prefer to be reached. We’re never
going to go completely online. We’ll always have residents who prefer to go to in-person meetings. But this is another tool in our toolbox to reach
people on their terms and get them to engage with us. If we only offered the in-person meetings, we would have missed out on a whole segment
of the population who had feedback to offer. Community Voice gave us another way to connect with people and try to grant their wishes for this
really important park in our town.”
The first phase of construction for the Philip S. Miller Park will kick off in 2013. There will be at least three phases of development over the next 10
to 15 years. With each new round of community meetings, Castle Rock plans to utilize Community Voice to continue the conversation.
###
CONNECTING PEOPLE
CP Case Study
888.228.2233
[email protected]
317 Houston Street, Suite E, Manhattan, KS 66502