Eastwood receives Otter nomination

COEUR d’ALENE — It wasn’t his crowning achievement, but Doug Eastwood remembers adding the horseshoe pits to Winton Park.

He had recently been hired as parks director by the city of Coeur d’Alene when the horseshoe pits at the county fairgrounds were being plowed up as part of an expansion.

The pitching club was ready to toss some iron, but had nowhere to throw.

If the horseshoe pits will no longer be there, Eastwood thought, why not have them here?

Eastwood, 66, who retired in 2013 after being instrumental in developing 27 urban parks in the Lake City — including the horseshoe pit-phase of Winton Park on the 1500 block of Melrose Street — was appointed this week by Gov. Butch Otter to serve on the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation’s six-member board.

“It’s a great honor to work with Idaho State Parks,” Eastwood said. “It’s a very prestigious post. I’m looking forward to it.”

Because that’s what he does.

He looks forward.

“When I came here in the late 1970s, we had five parks,” Eastwood said. “When I left in 2013, we had 32 parks.”

Building up the city’s green areas, including the 23 miles of the Centennial Trail that rolls through Coeur d’Alene between Higgens Point and Spokane, or downtown’s McEuen Field, one of Eastwood’s crowning achievements, required binocular vision.

“I liked to look ahead,” Eastwood said. “Where are we now and where do we want to be five, 10, 20 years from now? I looked at population projections.”

He worked with developers encouraging them to add green space to housing projects. One of them, Greenstone Homes, which built Coeur d’Alene Place, added an 11-acre park and many smaller green spaces, he said.

“They were phenomenal,” he said. “They were the model. It increases property values. Residents like it. The community wins, residents win, everybody wins.”

Financial gains were incorporated into his greater park picture.

“Parks have a huge economic impact on the city of Coeur d’Alene,” he said. “They generate a lot of money into the community.”

Family picnic, races, reunions, arts and craft fairs are among 200 community events tied to the city’s parks, he said. They draw crowds, which equals dollars.

Most of the parks he developed were built without a lot of city cash, however. Eastwood leveraged land donations to get state and federal money to build green spaces.

“He was really, really, really adept at building our park system,” city parks director Bill Greenwood said. “He did it time and time again.”

The city parks are second-to-none statewide.

“He put us on the map,” Greenwood said.

In the future, Eastwood will have a hand in the many parks on Idaho’s state map.

“The commission assists (Idaho Parks and Recreation) with just about anything they need help with,” Eastwood said. “Future expansions, ideas, reviewing requests.”

Eastwood’s vision and work ethic wasn’t lost on the governor’s office.

“Doug brings extraordinary experience to our statewide parks system,” Otter said in a press release announcing Eastwood’s appointment. “I look forward to the incredible knowledge and perspective he will add to the Parks and Recreation Board to further improve our management of recreational property and resources — from development to operations.”

On a pine-scented afternoon this week at Winton Park, a baseball-capped Eastwood, who lives in Post Falls, made a visit to the first city park he helped construct.

As men and women in short sleeves pitched shoes in the 16 pits shaded by Ponderosa pines, Eastwood chatted with Glen Wessel, of the local pitching club.

“We got the best end of this deal when they had us move out of the fairgrounds where there was no shade,” Wessel said.

The state horseshoe tournament is set for Winton Park later this summer, he said.

“I’ve never seen a town with so many parks,” Wessel mused, adjusting a ball cap. “And so many nice ones.”