About Girsh Park

The Lester A. and Viola S. Girsh Park is a cooperative community effort that is owned and operated by The Foundation for Girsh Park a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation. It is our mission to develop, maintain and enhance Lester A. Viola S. Girsh Park to provide all community members with affordable, high quality park and recreational facilities in a safe, attractive and healthy environment.

The Foundation for Girsh Park is a private non-profit organization that operates on four major sources of funding. These sources include user fees, fundraising, our endowment, and a strong partnership with the City of Goleta. The City subsidizes our maintenance budget by providing financial support each year. This unique non-profit, public/private partnership remains a model for successful community recreation in Santa Barbara County.

Girsh Park has served the community’s active recreational needs since 1999. The Park was built by Wynmark Company in conjunction with the Camino Real Marketplace construction. After the County of Santa Barbara respectfully declined the donation offer to own and operate the Park, the Camino Real Park Foundation, a non-profit 501 (c) (3) foundation, was created. The first Board of Directors was assembled with several community minded citizens that had extensive experience in recreation, sports, and non-profits. The original twelve-acre park was opened in May of 1999. Shortly after the opening, the Park was renamed The Lester A. and Viola S. Girsh Park, and the organization became The Foundation for Girsh Park in honor of the Park’s generous lead benefactors.


In 2005, the Foundation for Girsh Park purchased the 13-acre parcel to the west of the original park by raising over $5.6 million in the Fields Forever Capital Campaign.  This created a permanent home for two of Goleta’s most popular youth sports programs, Dos Pueblos Little League and AYSO Region 122. The facility was named Elings Fields in honor of Virgil Elings’ large donation to the campaign.

In March of 2009, we opened our synthetic turf Girsh-Hochman Soccer Field. The Foundation raised $1.2 million in the three-year Fields Forever 2 Capital Campaign.  The field is equipped with FieldTurf, the best synthetic turf on the market.  Girsh Park patrons have been thrilled to play on the most quality soccer field in Santa Barbara County.

Our most recent capital improvement project built the new Marborg Industries Fieldhouse in the Elings Fields Complex.  The building holds restrooms, a concession stand, and storage.  The project also upgraded our batting cages, built the new Camino Real Playground, and improved accessibility with new walkways.  These improvements were funded by our $700,000 Fields Forever 3 Capital Campaign.

We continue to own, operate and improve Girsh Park as a unique public/private partnership, ensuring that the park will be available for the community to enjoy.


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Board of Directors


Brooke Armstrong
Daniel E. Hochman
Leslie Lund
Kimberly Mitchell, Secretary
Joe O'Flaherty
Larry Parsons, VP
Alisa Pepper
Jordan Price
Kimberly Schizas
Matthew Taylor
Dan Terry, President

Advisory Board


Anthony Borgatello
David Borgatello
Virgil Elings
Chris Hahn
Mark Ingalls
Everett Kirkelie
Robert Kooyman
Diana Jessup Lee
Mark Linehan
John Maloney
Melissa Patrino
Del Rudeen
Derek A. Westen
Guy Wood

City of Goleta Representatives


JoAnne Plummer
Kyle Richards

Girsh Park Staff


Ryan Harrington,
Executive Director

Even in Drought, Girsh Park is Green

With the recent drought declarations by the County of Santa Barbara, and the State of California, Girsh Park remains focused on conserving our precious water resources. The idea of conserving water has been a major goal at Girsh Park since the park opened in 1999. All of the grass surfaces and landscaped areas are, and have been, irrigated with reclaimed water since the opening. This forward thinking has resulted in our fields remaining green, even through these harsh drought years. We have voluntarily taken several measures to continue to reduce the use of the reclaimed water. Not only does this help our local water supply, but it also helps the park save money each year. As a very unique 501 (c)(3) non-profit park, each and every dollar is precious to our operation.

In order to decrease water use and increase soccer at Girsh Park, we installed a state-of the-art synthetic turf soccer field in 2008. Girsh-Hochman Field, named after our generous benefactors, requires no water, no mowing, no pesticides or herbicides, and can be utilized 7 days a week 365 days a year. The water savings alone on this field made it worth the approximate $500,000 price of installation. More synthetic turf fields should be installed throughout the county to keep up with soccer demand, and to save on maintenance costs.

Additionally, we are constantly improving on our irrigation systems and drainage to function better, and to use less water. Kitson Landscape, Girsh Park’s landscape contractor, has been working diligently to fix broken sprinklers, capping sprinklers that are unnecessary, and has been reducing the amount of sprinkler run time over the last several years. The result has been less water use, less days of soggy or muddy fields, and better playing conditions for the Park’s 350,000 annual users.

Another water saving approach has been to embrace the once frowned upon kikuyu grass. Most lawn enthusiasts look down upon the use of kikuyu grass. Girsh Park has embraced it, because of its resiliency to high traffic, high growth rate during the warmest seasons, and most of all its need for less water compared to the more popular grass species. We have been periodically seeding fields with kikuyu over the last two years and have experienced much success. In addition to seed, we have also found that transplanting Kikuyu sod from unused patches in the park results in rapid growth, and spreading of the sod particularly in the summer months. We have discovered that we are our own small Kikuyu sod farm within the park, and we will continue to transplant this grass until each section of the park is dominated by kikuyu.

Finally, we have replaced all of our unreliable and inefficient spay irrigation in the perimeter landscaped areas with low emitting drip irrigation. The new drip systems have allowed our landscape irrigation to deliver water directly on the plants, where water is necessary. This increases efficiency and decreases the use of water in these planted areas. The perimeter is now thriving without the need for high volumes of water.

With all of these carefully thought out approaches, Girsh Park continues to be open to the public year round without sacrificing the quality of the facility. The fields will stay green, and the users will continue to experience the benefits of our water-wise approach to maintaining the fields at Girsh Park.