City Of Las Vegas Department Of Leisure Services
The Citizens Leadership Academy spent the evening with the Department of Leisure Services. Dinner was served at the Darling Tennis Center, which truly astounded me. There are things out in suburbs that we deserve to know about.
Darling is one small part of the 120 acre regional sports park which runs alongside Sum**lin Parkway from Buffalo to Durango. There’s 20 tennis courts and the tennis stadium, 11 Soccer Fields, playgrounds, picnic areas, and plenty of parking.
We had short presentations from Senior Services, Youth Program, Arts and Entertainment and a variety of other departments within Leisure Services.
I learned a lot about artificial verses natural turf. For example, 7 of the soccer fields are artificial. It appeared to be a huge cost and time savings decision for the city, but following the laws of unintended consequences, it was soon discovered that the artificial turf radiates heat and creates air temperatures air the 150 degree range for the players. Those fields can now only be used in the morning and evening during the summer.
Natural turf takes more water, and can be over seeded in the fall with Winter Rye Grass when the underlying Bermuda grass browns out and goes dormant once night time temperatures fall below 60 degrees. Year round green lawns require this type of overseeding. If your neighbor’s lawn is green year round, that’s what they’re doing. We got a demonstration of the 2 types of lawnmowers that are used. You’d think that if I could drive the million dollar Honda FCX last week, they’d let me drive a lawnmower, but NO! I did get to sit in it.
Besides finding out that there’s this huge sports park complex out in the suburbs, I think it’s best to just give you the link to the Leisure Services department and a few pictures of what we saw. 
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