How a refugee resettlement community built a splash pad for New American families
A composite case study of a Clarkston-area splash pad programmed for refugee and immigrant families, with multilingual outreach, low-barrier access, and family integration goals.
Summary
This composite/representative Clarkston case follows a $890,000 splash pad built for refugee and immigrant families from Bhutanese, Burmese, Somali, Afghan, and other New American communities. The project treated water play as family infrastructure for trust-building, language-access outreach, and summer integration programming. First-season attendance reached about 44,000 visits, with unusually high repeat use from apartment families who lacked yards, private amenities, and easy transportation to larger regional parks.
Key metrics
Background: a dense resettlement city where family infrastructure is scarce
The Clarkston-area community represented in this composite is famous among resettlement professionals for extraordinary cultural diversity compressed into a small municipal footprint. Apartment complexes house families from Bhutanese Nepali, Burmese, Somali, Afghan, Congolese, Syrian, and other backgrounds, many arriving through formal resettlement channels and then staying because social networks, faith communities, and service providers are nearby. What the city lacks, however, is abundant family recreation space. Many households live in apartments with limited outdoor play areas, few private vehicles, and little spare money for fee-based amenities elsewhere in metro Atlanta. Summer heat compounds that scarcity. Caregivers with several children may be navigating unfamiliar transit systems, limited English, new work schedules, and school calendars without many safe places to simply spend time. A splash pad proposal gained traction because local service providers understood something planners sometimes miss: free, proximate family recreation can be integration infrastructure. It gives newly arrived families a predictable place to go, helps parents learn a city through routine, and creates low-stakes contact across language communities. The project was therefore never framed as tourism or beautification. It was framed as a child-centered civic welcome anchored in the reality that resettlement does not end when a family gets housing. It continues through everyday spaces where people feel safe enough to linger, meet, and return.
Funding model: county capital plus refugee-serving philanthropy and health dollars
The $890,000 capital stack combined public and nonprofit sources aligned around family stability rather than recreation alone. The county contributed $420,000 through a parks-equity capital program targeting high-density, low-amenity neighborhoods. A refugee-serving philanthropy collaborative added $260,000 after local organizations argued that the project would function as community integration infrastructure, especially for children and mothers with limited mobility. A pediatric health system provided $140,000 through a heat-health and active-play initiative, and the remaining $70,000 came from municipal ARPA carryover and local donors. The varied funding sources could have produced a confused project brief, but in practice they converged on a simple theory: if families have a reliable free place to gather in summer, other forms of engagement become easier. Grant agreements reflected that. Several funders required language-access plans, transportation analysis, and free programming commitments, not just construction deliverables. The city also budgeted operations early because service providers were clear that an intermittently closed splash pad would erode trust quickly among families already dealing with bureaucratic uncertainty elsewhere in life. Rather than treating operations as a later parks issue, the city folded them into a broader family-support conversation from the start. That is one reason the project launched with stronger outreach and staffing than many similarly sized municipal pads.
Community engagement: language access was a design tool, not a translation step
Standard public meetings would have failed this project. Many target users work evenings, rely on shared rides, or are understandably wary of formal hearings. The city and its partners instead held listening sessions at apartment courtyards, school cafeterias, ESL classes, mutual-aid groups, and faith centers, using interpreters and bilingual community navigators in eight languages. Those conversations surfaced design issues that a generic workshop would likely miss. Parents asked for clear sightlines because some families are supervising many children at once. Caregivers wanted shade close enough to the water that they could remain modestly dressed and still monitor toddlers. Several women requested family restrooms and changing spaces with greater privacy than typical park facilities. Service providers emphasized stroller storage, transit access, and posted rules using pictures as well as words because literacy and script familiarity vary. Youth participants asked for evening hours, colorful lighting, and music-ready event power for cultural celebrations. Perhaps most importantly, families consistently said they did not want the space to feel charity-branded or managed as if they were guests receiving a program. They wanted it to feel like part of the city. That distinction shaped everything from signage tone to the decision to keep admission free and unverified. The strongest engagement outcome was not a list of features; it was a shift in posture from service delivery toward civic belonging.
Design and site planning: low-barrier use had to be built into the layout
The chosen site sat beside a small park within walking distance of several apartment clusters and near a bus route already used by many resettled families. The 3,000-square-foot recirculating pad includes 16 features, but the surrounding support infrastructure is what makes it work for this community. There are deep shade canopies placed close to the action, not at a detached picnic lawn. Family restrooms and changing rooms are lockable, stroller-friendly, and positioned so caregivers do not need to choose between privacy and visibility. Pictogram-based signage appears alongside English, Arabic, Nepali, Burmese, Somali, Dari, and Swahili. The seating plan assumes large sibling groups and mixed-age supervision rather than one child per adult. A dry plaza with power access supports ESL story hours, cultural celebrations, vaccination pop-ups, and citizenship-resource tables without interrupting daily play. The design team also avoided strong thematic assumptions. There is no faux global-village branding, no mural treating refugee identity as exotic content, and no requirement that the space visibly symbolize diversity to outsiders. Instead, it prioritizes practical inclusivity. That choice may appear less dramatic in photographs, but it is exactly what makes the site feel normal and usable to families whose daily lives already involve enough translation, explanation, and administrative friction.
Operations and programming: trust came from consistency and human presence
When the pad opened in May 2025, the city paired standard parks staffing with community navigators from partner nonprofits during the busiest early weeks. Those navigators did not act as gatekeepers. They greeted families, explained rules informally, helped with interpretation, and connected parents to summer programs when asked. Their presence mattered because many families were encountering the city's recreation system for the first time. The operating model kept things simple: free entry, no residency checks, posted seasonal hours, and a multilingual hotline plus webpage for closures. Programming layered onto that base without overpowering it. Weekly family nights rotated community-led music and storytelling. Public-health teams offered hydration, sunscreen, and vaccine outreach. Libraries ran multilingual read-aloud sessions. Some women-only or lower-stimulation time blocks were piloted in partnership with community advisors, not because the whole site needed cultural restriction, but because targeted accommodation increased use among families who might otherwise stay away. Operating costs settled near $63,000, which city officials defended as modest relative to the combination of recreation, health outreach, and social integration functions the site now supported. Importantly, the city avoided over-programming. Families repeatedly indicated that simply having a reliable place to gather was itself the main service. The programming succeeds because it sits lightly on top of a consistent, low-barrier baseline.
Impact: repeat use, cross-community contact, and stronger family routines
First-season attendance reached roughly 44,000 visits, but the standout metric was repeat use: about 61% of surveyed households reported returning at least weekly during peak summer weeks. That pattern is significant because it suggests the splash pad became routine infrastructure, not a one-off novelty. Apartment managers reported fewer children playing in parking lots during hottest afternoon periods. School-family liaisons said caregivers referenced the splash pad as a familiar meeting point for carpools, handoffs, and informal social support. Nonprofit partners observed more cross-community mixing than at program-specific events, likely because play created a lower-pressure context than workshops or service appointments. Parents who shared little language still shared shade, snacks, and supervision rhythms. The city was careful not to oversell social cohesion; a splash pad does not erase trauma, class differences, or resettlement bureaucracy. But it can create repeated, ordinary contact under conditions that feel welcoming instead of extractive. That matters. For families rebuilding life in a new country, consistency often counts more than spectacle. The project also generated spillover demand for swimming lessons, transit information, and youth recreation sign-ups, showing that one successful entry point can make the broader civic system feel more approachable. In that sense, the pad functioned exactly as advocates hoped: as a soft front door into city life.
Lessons and tensions: integration infrastructure still needs boundaries
The project was not frictionless. Weekend crowding occasionally exceeded shade capacity. Some residents from nearby single-family blocks worried that the pad would draw too many outsiders, language that local leaders had to address carefully without validating exclusionary instincts. Staff also learned that multilingual signage does not eliminate the need for human presence; during the first month, most misunderstandings were resolved through conversation, not through rules boards. Another tension involved expectations from partner organizations. Some wanted the site to host more service enrollment, resource fairs, or case-management outreach than families actually wanted during play time. City staff pushed back, arguing that the space should not feel like an outdoor office. That boundary preserved trust. The lesson is that integration infrastructure works best when it remains infrastructure first and intervention second. Families can choose deeper engagement because the place feels good, not because every visit is structured toward a program goal. The city also found that accommodations such as women-focused or lower-stimulation hours are easiest to sustain when they are predictable and community-led rather than reactive. Overall, the project confirmed that low-barrier recreation can carry a surprising amount of social value, but only if institutions resist the temptation to instrumentalize every square foot.
Replicability for other New American communities
The Welcome Park model is highly relevant for municipalities like Clarkston, parts of Dearborn, Buffalo, Rochester, Columbus, and other resettlement hubs where dense apartment family life, language diversity, and limited private recreation options overlap. Replication is strongest when the splash pad sits near existing service and transit networks rather than in a destination park reachable mainly by car. The key design principle is low-barrier use: visible access, free admission, multilingual and pictogram communication, family privacy, and shade where caregivers actually need it. The key governance principle is partnership without takeover. Refugee-serving organizations, schools, clinics, and libraries should shape outreach and programming, but the amenity must still feel like a normal part of the city rather than a specialized aid site. That distinction protects dignity and encourages wider civic belonging. The model is less applicable where local government is unwilling to invest in language access or where neighborhoods already have abundant family recreation. In communities that do match the profile, a splash pad can quietly solve several problems at once: heat relief, child play, parental routine, and social familiarity with local institutions. Those are small things individually. Together, they amount to a more livable arrival city. The combination is especially powerful when city staff stay visibly present and predictable.
Voices from the project
“Families did not ask us for a symbolic welcome. They asked for a place nearby where their children could play safely, where shade was close, and where they would not need to prove they belonged.”
“The repeat-visit data told us this was not just a nice ribbon-cut project. It became part of weekly life, which is exactly what integration infrastructure is supposed to do.”
“Our biggest mistake would have been trying to turn every play day into a service fair. Trust grew because the splash pad felt normal first.”
Lessons learned
- Treat language access as a design method from the first listening session, not as translation added after plans are drafted.
- Choose sites within walking and transit reach of apartment family clusters; destination parks reached mainly by car will miss many target users.
- Keep admission free and avoid residency verification for communities already navigating enough paperwork elsewhere.
- Build privacy, stroller circulation, and caregiver sightlines into the layout because family use patterns differ from generic park assumptions.
- Use community navigators early in operations, but avoid making the site feel like an outdoor service office.
- Protect low-barrier daily play even while layering programming and outreach around the edges.
FAQ
Why is a splash pad relevant to refugee and immigrant integration?
Because routine, low-cost family spaces help new residents build familiarity with a city, meet other families, and access nearby institutions without the pressure of formal appointments. In dense apartment communities, that everyday infrastructure can matter as much as scheduled programs.
What makes language access effective at a splash pad?
Using interpreters and trusted navigators during planning, placing pictograms alongside multiple languages on site, and keeping rules simple enough to explain conversationally. Signage alone is useful, but human support is what builds confidence early on.
Should a project like this host lots of service programming on site?
Only carefully. Light-touch outreach can work well, but overloading the site with enrollment tables or case-management activity can make families feel managed instead of welcomed. The recreation function has to remain primary.
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