Park of the Week: Live Oak Elementary Park

One of San Ramon's biggest prides and joys is the city's amazing park system. Our city has a whopping 53 parks spread throughout our vast community, ranging from small neighborhood playgrounds to multi-acre, multi-feature parks.

Each week we'll be highlighting one of our city parks, showing you photos, listing park features, and telling you what's special about them. We have so many parks that it will take Patch more than a year to profile each of them. So if you have a special park you'd like featured next, let us know!

Park of the Week: Live Oak Elementary Park

As far as elementary school parks go, the Dougherty Valley's Live Oak Elementary has it all. The park first opened to the public in the fall of 2007 as part of the Live Oak Elementary School campus, one of the most recent additions to the San Ramon Valley Unified School District. As such, the park's features still shine with a bright newness, befitting a well cared for public space.

Being part of an elementary school also means that Live Oak Elementary Park was designed with kids in mind in terms of both safety and fun.

On the near side of the blacktop is a massive new playground with a springy, rubber-like floor. Drawbridges, curvy slides, and monkey bars abound on this swingin' set. Quirky elements like toadstools, hand drums, and clanking bells add offbeat character.

The blacktop also hosts several schoolyard classics like full-size basketball courts, tetherball, hopscotch, handball courts, and even a towering ball wall. Geography whizzes will get a kick out of the giant map outline of the United States. Men and women's restrooms are available on the far side of the blacktop, attached to the Live Oak classroom buildings.

Beckhams-to-be can practice their passing and shooting drills on the large Live Oak soccer field. The even surface and well-kept greenery also make the perfect platform for Frisbee, a game of catch or a quick round of tag.

With the addition of a few shady saplings that line the field, it seems that Live Oak Elementary Park is the total package. 

Have you visited Live Oak Elementary Park? What's your favorite thing to do there? What do you wish the park offered that it doesn't? Share your views with other Patch readers by adding your comment in the box below.