CRANBERRY TWP — With a decade-old parks plan coming close to fruition, Cranberry Township officials plan to update its comprehensive parks scheme to bring top-tier amenities to residents.

Township manager Dan Santoro said Friday the township will soon lay out, with resident input, the plan for the next decade of its parks services.

“We are in the process right now of updating our comprehensive parks and recreation and open-space plan. It's a 10-year plan, the last one came after the Cranberry Plan (comprehensive plan) was created in 2012,” Santoro said. “That plan will lay out the next 10 years, 10 to 15 years, of what parks should look like, passive and active, in the community.”

In doing so, Cranberry will examine many factors of its current park offerings, including what the township’s open areas provide to residents, what they could provide to residents and what residents could be better served by parks.

That is all part of the township’s commitment to providing recreational opportunities to its residents.

“We believe in world-class amenities that attract and retain residents and provide the kind of things that families are looking for in the community,” Santoro said. “Parks not only provide a way to get outside and rec opportunities, but they also increase property values, increase quality of life.

“Anything from active sports to a passive stroll through the park, there's advantages not only from a health perspective but from a community perspective.”

Of course, examining what the future of Cranberry parks will look like doesn’t mean the township is taking no action to currently improve its open areas.

“The things that we’ve been doing here recently include enhancements to the dog park,” Santoro said. “We relocated the dog park in Community Park North; that's in anticipation to a larger project on that Community Park North property to expand its purpose to include a multi-purpose playing field or fields.”

The dog park in Community Park is the result of success at the North Boundary Park canine area.

“Last year we started the pilot program at North Boundary,” Santoro said. “We just expanded that program Community Park, where dogs can go out on specified areas and trails, and the amphitheater.”