When a city or municipality comes to us after a recreation project has gone sideways, the story is rarely unique. The details change, but the patterns repeat: a budget that didn't hold, a design the community can't afford, a timeline that slipped while costs climbed. The frustrating part is that nearly all of these problems trace back to decisions made, or skipped, in the first few months of a project.
The good news is that the most expensive mistakes are also the most preventable. Here are the five we see most often, and what it takes to avoid them.
Mistake 1: Skipping or Rushing the Feasibility Work
The costliest surprises on recreation projects rarely trace back to one bad decision. They come from unanswered questions about budget, scope, operations and site constraints that carry forward as design moves on, and overdesigning early just means paying for redesign later, in money and time.
A feasibility study builds the foundation for those decisions. It looks at how a community's goals, site constraints, planned operations and available funding fit together, producing a framework for what's achievable and where tradeoffs lie, not a fixed answer. Aligning expectations this early reduces the odds of a major redesign and builds confidence in the schedule and budget ahead.
Zoning can reshape a site's buildable area before a single program decision gets made, and the programming conversation matters just as much: what the facility will run, how the city plans to operate it and what that means for the design. A firm with deep recreation experience brings the pattern recognition to ask the questions that keep something from getting overlooked, often visible from the very first meetings.
Mistake 2: Underestimating Total Project Costs
Cities often budget carefully for construction and then get blindsided by everything around it.
The best defense is forming a complete team early, including a construction manager or contractor. When the contractor is at the table from the start, cost reality is built into the design as it develops, rather than discovered after the drawings are done. A complete team also reduces the risk of information loss and ensures everyone starts with the same project understanding, rowing in the same direction.
Mistake 3: Designing for Today Instead of Tomorrow
Recreation needs evolve, and a facility designed only for today's programs can feel undersized surprisingly fast. That's why we always discuss possible expansion during programming and incorporate it into the design, even when expansion isn't on the table in the foreseeable future. If the site can accommodate growth, the design should assume it might happen.
The encouraging part is that future-proofing doesn't have to blow the budget. Small, inexpensive decisions early on make a meaningful difference 10 or 20 years out. Avoid placing rooms that are hard and expensive to demolish in the areas where expansion would logically occur. Think through utility routing so future construction doesn't require tearing up what you just built. In some cases, stubbing in utilities that are easy to connect to later costs little today and saves enormously down the road.
Mistake 4: Poor Site Selection
Some sites look fine on paper and then create serious problems during design or construction:
Wetlands. The required setbacks can be substantial, shrinking your usable space and complicating your stormwater approach.
Undeveloped land. Infrastructure upgrades on a raw site can be costly, and some of those costs get passed along to the project.
Unknown soils. Mitigating poor soils is one of the most expensive surprises in construction. Solutions can range from removing large amounts of poor soil and hauling in quality soil to more complex footing and foundation designs.
The key is to evaluate sites before committing to a purchase, and HTG can help with that at whatever depth suits the situation. Sometimes, a few hours overlaying a building and parking layout on a site is enough to determine whether further exploration makes sense. Other times, a deeper analysis is warranted, where we visit the site and study traffic and surrounding development to identify strengths and concerns.
Mistake 5: Skipping Community and Stakeholder Engagement
Recreation projects live or die on public support, and projects most often stall when the budget doesn't align with the funding. That's frequently a symptom of a community that was never meaningfully brought along.
This is where front-loaded planning becomes a political asset, not just a design exercise. Our inVision process gives a project's internal champions a real set of tools for building public support. Engaging images and plans make a project feel real and get people excited.
Preliminary pricing, developed with professionals, sits at the forefront of every conversation, whether you're approaching private donors or asking the public to vote on a tax, and it adds critical validity to the effort.
Already Made One of These Mistakes? How to Get Back on Track
If you're a city leader reading this and recognizing your own project, the advice is simple: form a strong team, now. The earlier a design team is engaged, the earlier potential issues are identified and the sooner a strategic path forward can be developed.
A project that's drifting isn't a project that's lost. It's a project that needs its planning foundation rebuilt before another dollar is committed.
