A nearly completed $4 million fence intended to protect the Riverway Sports Park might be too good at its job. Neighbors of the 83-acre, city-owned recreation facility say the spike-topped iron fence that now surrounds the park is keeping them from using it.
Soccer Fields Need Protection
The original plan for fencing at the park at 3611 North Dinuba Boulevard was to isolate its 10 full-size soccer fields. The fields are extremely popular and in constant use, yet the turf needs to be regrown periodically to keep the fields up to standard for play. The city tried blocking off the fields, but the public proved to be less than cooperative.
“Without having any fencing, that (field rehabilitation) was difficult to do when we closed the park down for maintenance,” Parks and Recreation facilities manager Alvin Dias told the Visalia City Council at a meeting February 3, 2025. “We used to put in temporary fencing that would get vandalized or just destroyed, and we were constantly having to repair that.”
Those who wished to use the fields cut the fences to get in. And telling park-goers temporary barriers were needed to preserve the soccer fields didn’t help much either, Dias said.
“We started putting up signage, trying to do things to educate people,” he said. “It seemed to help, but we still cannot control the usage of the soccer fields.”
Transients, Trash Behind Expanded Fencing Project
At some point in 2024, the city received a $6.6 million windfall in the form of additional sales tax revenue. It was decided to use part of the money for construction of a chain-link fence around the soccer fields. The cost was to be $1.5 million. That was in April 2024.
In June of 2024, the council expanded the project to include the entire park inside a 7-foot-tall, spike-topped wrought-iron fence. By the time the council gave final approval for the project in July 2025, the cost had more than doubled to $3.89 million.
The reasoning for expanding the project changed too. It was no longer an issue of maintaining the integrity of the soccer pitches. The majority of the council now intended to protect the park and the surrounding community by restricting access after it closed. The park, they said, had become a popular spot for illicit activities.
“It was about a year ago, maybe two years ago, we had a young family come up and just tell us how saddened they were that before they could use their park they had to go out and make sure there weren’t any used condoms, that there wasn’t any drug paraphernalia, needles on the field,” Mayor Brett Taylor said at the February 3 council meeting. “And that’s just not OK.”
Council member Liz Wynn echoed that sentiment.
“I’ve had many complaints from people who don’t feel safe out there,” she said.
Council member Brian Poochigian also said he’s heard many similar negative remarks.
“I spend a lot of time at the sports park, sometimes I feel like too much time at the sports park, having two kids,” he said. “I constantly get stopped at the sports park with complaints about transients coming in, trash in the bathrooms, people leaving trash out there.”
Poochigian believes there is no reason to leave the park accessible when it is closed for the day.
“Me, personally, I don’t feel like people should be in the park at nighttime,” he said. “Park-time activity at nighttime, nothing good could come from that.”
Also, because encircling the entire park gives the city the option of charging admission. While there is no plan to move forward on establishing entrance fees, members of the council felt it was an option that might be necessary in the future.
None of the more than 50 other parks in Visalia are fenced.
Council Member Breaks Ranks Over Cost
City council support for the fence at Riverway Sports Park was unanimous as it was presented during the February 3 meeting. By July, Council Member Emmanual Soto had changed his view, casting the only no vote. The reason was the project’s cost, which had reached nearly $4 million by then.
“I won’t be supporting this,” he said. “I think the price tag is way too high, and there are other things that are more important.”
Other members of the council thought the expense was warranted.
“I think if this makes it safer for the children of our community and our community as a whole, then it’s money well spent,” said Poochigian.
Council member Steve Nelsen pointed to occurrences of vandalism at the park, including the destruction of two soccer fields’ playing surfaces by someone who drove onto the pitches. He said action to protect the park should have come earlier.
“In all honesty, it should have been done a long time ago to ensure the quality of the park,” he said. “There’s been a lot of damage at that park.”
Fence Keeps Neighbors From Using the Park
A frequent user of the park, which is inside his district, Soto said he understands the need to protect the soccer fields. But he also has concerns about accessibility for community members who use the park on a daily basis.
“I have families who use the park who are complaining they can’t get their strollers through the gates,” he said.
He said a young mothers group who meets regularly at the park have complained they can no longer simply walk across the street and into the park. The extensive security fence has cut off easy access, substantially increasing the walking distance and time needed to visit. The fence has become a deterrent to neighborhood gatherings.
“Now they have to walk all the way around,” Soto said. “Before they could have walked right across the street. They live right across the street from the park.”
Soto requested added gates at the southern corners of the park, but they were not included. Parks and Rec facilities manager Dias said they were not included due to safety concerns.
“The reason we didn’t put pedestrian gates there is because we didn’t want people crossing the street to access the park, during league play and things like that,” he said. “We’re trying to funnel them into safer areas to cross.”
The corners of the sports park include open areas where people gather, and the lack of access makes it more difficult for them to use the park.
“I go to that park very often to run, walk my dogs,” Soto said. “I see a lot of people in the northwest and southwest corners. They’re reading, sitting around, playing games.”
Citizen Says Safety Concerns with Security Fence
Eric Ramirez, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood who was 8 when the park was opened, said he is concerned the fence could pose a safety threat. He is also worried about unintended “cultural” fallout from building the fence.
“I love the sports park. I have multiple memories of the sports park in particular and its wide open area and the view of the Sequoia trees, the open fields and the river,” he said. “For me, the biggest question is: Who is this park for? Is it specifically a sports complex that is made only to contain sporting events, or is it a community park that is made for the community?”
He worries young people living around the park won’t have a safe place to simply hang out in the way he and his friends did.
The spikes that top the new fence are of particular concern for Ramirez.
“This particular construction of this fence with the heavy-duty points and spikes, I think it’s a safety thing,” he said. “I was a dumb kid who would have jumped that fence. I might have gotten hurt.”
“I think that the park should be for everyone,” Ramirez said. “I think that all the parks in general should be for the most amount of people they can serve as feasibly as possible.”