Watch now: Bill Clevenger ends his reign at Decatur Park District | Local



Bill Clevenger about his tenure as executive director of park district and those he worked with over the years.







Clay Jackson





DECATUR — Former Decatur Park Board President Judy Locke helped hire former Decatur Park District Executive Director Bill Clevenger 33 years ago.

Who better, then, to sum up the career of the of the soft-spoken man who came to Decatur all the way from his native West Virginia?

“In my estimation, he made the Park District,” said Locke. “The rest of us just rode along, you know?”

It’s been a long journey of struggle and achievement for the newly-retired executive director: From recent triumphs like the arrival of the Devon Lakeshore Amphitheater and the Splash Cove water park to an expanding network of bike trails over the last 26 years, Clevenger has watched some impressive successes during his long tenure.

Sitting in his spacious and comfortable 1920s red brick home in Decatur’s West End, the ever-modest retiree gives all the credit to the staff recruited to do the nuts and bolts work of running the district.

“I’ve always said the three ‘Rs’ are my most important job,” explained Clevenger, 68. “Find the right person for the right place at the right time. Then get out of the way and let them do their jobs.”

The buck has to stop somewhere, however, and the man who advised and guided the elected park board reserved a prominent place for it on his desk. Leadership, he says, means accepting responsibility, and criticism, for decisions made while trying to look ahead and figure out what’s trending and what new things people want to do with their leisure time.

“I think one of the worst things an agency can do is get stuck in yesterday,” he said.


Former Decatur Park District Executive Director Bill Clevenger poses fora portrait at Scovill Sculpture Park.




That means the man for all seasons has to be willing to kill the occasional sacred cow and be willing to endure the slings and arrows of outraged citizens after he does it. The park board’s 2009 vote to close the beloved Nelson Park Golf Course (and the 2011 closure of Lake Shore Drive through Nelson Park) paved the way for eventually ushering in new excitement like the Overlook Adventure Park Mini Golf Course, Splash Cove and the Devon. But those decisions did not, at first — and still don’t, with some diehard critics — win the park district or Clevenger many friends.

Vast numbers of happy visitors do love the new facilities and everything that is part of what is known as Lakeshore Landing. But those cries of outraged golfer pain still echo in Clevenger’s ears over the demise of a beloved Nelson Park course that dated back 93 years; the closure of Scovill Golf Course in 2017 also produced much angst. And yet the ability to “pivot” in the face of controversial change is what Clevenger sees as the forward-looking part of his job.

“I remember in the early ‘90s we used to play 190,000 rounds of golf on five golf courses and, in the last year before COVID-19, we were going to play about 40,000 rounds on two golf courses,” he said. “So there has been a need to make some strategic changes.”

He said the proof of the entertainment pudding is in the eating, and just how many people are eating it.

“Take Lakeshore Landing just this past summer,” he said. “There were about 50,000 visitors to the water park, 40,000-plus to the amphitheater and another 25,000 or 30,000 I think to the whole mini golf, ropes course, batting cages we have there. And then you have your disc golf, you have your dog park and you are probably looking at, overall, some 200,000 visits in a year.”

Clevenger said the two golf courses left, Red Tail Run and Hickory Point, are “beautiful facilities” giving golfers a great experience. He said axing under-used facilities was painful but necessary to free up more room and ultimately more budget to give modern audiences more of what they wanted, such as a growing trail system open to bikers, runners and walkers that already extends more than 14 miles.
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In this 2018 file photo, Decatur Park District Executive Director Bill Clevenger talks about the park district’s long-term vision and lakefront plan. 




Clevenger says young families moving to town ask questions about things like the availability of bike trails when assessing quality of life.

“They want to know this stuff,” he said. “And the number of people who use our trail system now is just staggering.”

And yet when the trail system was being introduced in the 1990s, Clevenger remembers up-in-arms homeowners who lived nearby wanted no part of it, fearing invasions of their backyards.

“Now people are buying real estate to be close to the bike trail,” he said with a smile.

Other things he’s proud of are the Decatur Airport, another Park District responsibility recently endowed with jet service to Chicago.

“You can get there now in something like 25 minutes,” said Clevenger with evident satisfaction. “And the service is with United (via SkyWest Airlines), so you are connected to the world.”

And, of course, he can’t resist putting in a good word for the Scovill Zoo, greatly expanded under his watch and now pulling in 100,000 visits a year.

Along with that, he’s proud of some 2,000 acres of parklands scattered across 36 parks and nature areas and a swarm of Park District recreational activities ranging from soccer to singing to tennis to dance and pickleball. Pickleball?

“Pickleball is literally huge,” said Clevenger. “It’s one of those pivots we’ve made to what people want.”
Clevenger_Bill 10.5.17

In this 2017 file photo, Decatur Park District executive director Bill Clevenger speaks about park projects and programs during a Community Leaders Breakfast at the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel.




Partnerships are something he would like, and expects, to see more of in another pivot toward the future. He cites the example of working with philanthropist Howard Buffett, who came up with $3.9 million in funding to make the Devon Amphitheater happen when promised state funding died a political death. Or the partnership with Millikin University that created the Decatur Indoor Sports Center, shared by students and the public.

“Partnerships are really the way to go,” said Clevenger. “The more partnerships we can create, the more successful we’re going to be going down the road.”

His own road led from growing up in West Virginia to earning a Bachelor of Science and master’s degrees in parks and recreation administration, and then an education specialist degree in community education/public administration. Clevenger had taught for a while himself and seriously considered a career in it, but found his true passion was in the application of hard-won knowledge in the outside world.

“I would say Bill was extremely knowledgeable about park district matters, park district code, what things we could do to expand and what things would be challenges for us in this community,” said current Park Board President Stacey Young.

“He was well-versed in a lot of issues and he was open to a lot of concepts and he could be passionate, very passionate, about the changes he wanted to see.”

Clevenger’s successor as executive director, Clay Gerhard, the former director of operations, has acknowledged his old boss as a friend and mentor who worked closely with him to achieve a smooth transition.

And Locke, the former park board president, recalls Clevenger as a natural teacher whose personality made people tend to “gravitate to him” at meetings and events.

“I don’t think in all those years at the park district I ever ran into somebody who disliked Bill Clevenger,” she added.

The newly-minted retiree has a bit of a different take on that one, but never had a problem defending his decisions with those who took a different point of view. The Clevenger approach is to debate the facts, and if all we can do is agree to disagree on what should be done about them, there’s still no reason why we can’t talk about it some more over a convivial lunch.


Watch now: After years of work, Splash Cove makes big splash

What he doesn’t envy about his successor is having to fight his corner in the new mixed martial arts forum of social media. Here, civility is frequently a quaint, outdated concept where criticisms can get vicious and personal real quick, and being just plain wrong is no impediment to clinging to your point of view.

“Everybody has an opinion and everybody is entitled to their opinion,” said Clevenger. “But you are not entitled to your own set of facts.”

So a retirement far from the madding crowd definitely does have its plus side, and Clevenger is looking forward to embracing it. The father of four adult sons with his wife Candace (president and CEO of Heritage Behavioral Health Center) and happy grandfather to three grandchildren, granddad is looking forward to being able to spend more time participating in the latest Clevenger generation’s recreational moments as they grow up.

He also never forgets a kindness or the precious people who were there for him when he was growing up himself. And so he also plans to use his newfound leisure time to go home to West Virginia so he can do more to help out his dad, Charles Clevenger.

“My dad is 94 and lives on a farm and still goes out on his farm every day; he’s like the Energizer Bunny,” said his son. “And I intend to be heading over there a lot more often than I’ve done in the past.”

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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