Haydon marks 20 years of building parks.
PHOENIX, ARIZONA (July 20, 2023)
As a kid, Michael Corona worked with his dad constructing parks.
“My dad was a general superintendent,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been around my entire life. He would drive on Saturdays and start working. He would pick me up and put me right next to him. Just going out there and being apart of clearing a site, making material, working with him. It’s something I remember vividly, him teaching me how to run equipment and working within a park when it was just a dirt lot.”
Michael, a project manager at Haydon Companies, now plays a key role in shaping today’s parks and surrounding communities.
“All the communities coming into the park are going to be interacting with that park in different ways,” Michael said. “It’s something we need to be mindful of during the preconstruction phase into construction and going on. There’s going to be a family. There’s going to be a single person with a dog. All those people need to interact with it in their own unique way, and we need to be mindful of what we want that to be through the construction process. We take part in community events. We make sure we are a part of that community. We want to get involved. We just don’t want to be a builder. We want to be entrenched in that community. Most of the time we are living in those communities.”
This year, Haydon marks 20 years of building parks which include sprawling fields, vibrant indoor/outdoor facilities, entertainment complexes, fishing lakes, sports courts, landscaping, roadway, and utility work.
“We don’t build the parks that you grew up with,” he said. “Huge, regional parks all have their own theme. This is not an aluminum slide that you’re sliding down. This is state-of-art equipment when it comes to safety, when it comes to people interacting with the public, ensuring the community is getting a park that’s getting cutting edge. The park that you grew up with and the parks that we are building now are completely different. All of the landscape, architecture, it’s all meant to work seamlessly together.”
Haydon provides all-in-one construction solutions including Building (Commercial), Heavy Civil, Preconstruction, Landscape, and Building Information Modeling. And the company leverages this wide ranging expertise when building parks.
“Something that sets us apart is the level of sophistication in which we manage these projects,” Michael said. “That comes from our history and the ability to draw information from other arms of the company to make sure we successfully deliver a project. There is very rarely a time when we run into something that has not been seen before as a company. For example, we work heavily with Earthscapes, our landscaping division. What time of year are we starting the project? Do we need to use sod? Are we going to be using seed? What about the drainage? The timeline? The overall schedule? That’s going to dictate a lot of what you’re doing. We have a lot of experience working through the different seasons, elements and timelines.”
A significant component is ensuring municipalities receive training for ongoing maintenance of parks. Haydon creates videos and provides manuals for clients on training and maintenance schedules.
“It’s a huge component that often goes overlooked,” he said. “Onboarding is super critical to make sure these huge parks are successful. Parks have the ability to change a culture. It takes a lot of thought to be able to create these civic areas where people can come and interact and find relief from hustle and bustle.”
Learn more about Haydon’s Parks and Recreation projects at https://haydon.com/portfolio/parks-recreation/.
