Peterborough’s parks are easy to take for granted. Grass. Benches. Ball diamonds. Splash pads. A place to walk the dog, wear out the kids, catch a summer concert, or sit by the water and pretend the world isn’t held together with property tax bills and pothole filler.
But parks are not just scenery. They are infrastructure. They are recreation. They are tourism. They are public health. And, in some cases, they are quiet little money-makers.
According to the City of Peterborough’s 2026 budget, Recreation, Parks and Cultural Services comes with recommended spending of about $19 million, offset by nearly $12 million in revenue, leaving a net tax-supported cost of just over $7 million. That number is not parks alone — it also includes recreation, culture, arenas, the Memorial Centre, Riverview Park and Zoo, the marina, the museum and the Art Gallery — but it gives a sense of the scale. Parks sit inside a much bigger civic machine.
And that machine gets used.
According to the City, Peterborough has access to more than 80 sports fields and courts through municipal and partner facilities, including school boards, Fleming and Trent. Natural turf fields and ball diamonds typically run from mid-May to Thanksgiving. Artificial turf stretches the season further, from April into November. Tennis, pickleball and beach volleyball all have their own seasonal windows.
Then there’s the summer family circuit: nine splash pads, Beavermead’s supervised beach, and two supervised wading pools. These are not luxury items if you’re a parent on a hot July afternoon with bored kids and no cottage. They are survival infrastructure.
The parks also carry Peterborough’s public personality. Del Crary Park is more than a patch of grass by Little Lake. It is home to Musicfest, Dragon Boat Festival, Canada Day events, fireworks and summer crowds. Millennium Park handles weddings, fundraisers, festivals and waterfront wandering. Quaker Foods City Square has become a downtown gathering spot, with skating in winter and events through the year.
Some of this costs money. Some of it makes money.
According to the City’s posted rates, park green space can be rented hourly, with different rates depending on length of use. Artificial turf rents for more than $100 an hour for occasional users, with a lower rate for heavier bookings. Beach volleyball courts, sports fields, pavilions and public spaces all feed into the rental system.
The bigger revenue pieces are easier to spot along the water.
Beavermead Campground has 95 campsites, including serviced and unserviced lots, and operates from May to October. According to Otonabee Conservation’s posted 2026 rates, nightly campsites run from the low-$50 range for unserviced sites to the low-$60 range for serviced sites, while seasonal sites run close to $4,000. According to Otonabee Conservation’s 2023 operating budget, Beavermead Campground was budgeted for about $330,000 in revenue against about $302,000 in expenses, leaving a projected operating surplus of roughly $28,000. That does not mean the campground pays for the whole park system, but it does mean Beavermead is more than a picnic spot. It is a seasonal accommodation business sitting inside a public park.
The Peterborough Marina is another waterfront asset with revenue attached. According to the City, the marina is City-owned and operated by Otonabee Conservation, offering seasonal and transient slips, fuel, power, water, showers, laundry and docking for boats up to 70 feet. A previous City report listed 95 slips, with seasonal mooring revenue alone at just over $79,000, representing about 62 per cent of total mooring revenue. That would put total mooring revenue at roughly $128,000 at the time, before other services such as fuel, transient docking or pump-outs.
So no, parks are not suddenly paying the City’s bills. But they are also not just passive expenses. Beavermead, the marina, field rentals, event spaces and public programming all show that parkland can generate revenue while still doing its real job: giving people somewhere to go.
But the parks story should not only be about Del Crary, Beavermead and the postcard pieces. According to the City’s Parks and Open Space Study, 79 neighbourhood parks were identified as needing rejuvenation. The study ranked priority parks including Cameron Tot Lot, Earlwood, Keith Wightman, Dominion, Hamilton, Glenn Pagett, Whitefield, Dainard, Denne, and Queen Alexandra/Nicholls Place.
That may be the real story.
Peterborough’s showcase parks bring crowds, events, tourism and civic pride. But the small neighbourhood parks are where the daily life happens. That’s where kids learn to climb, seniors walk loops, teenagers loiter harmlessly, and families without money still get a piece of the city.
Parks are not free. But neither is a city without them.
They are where public money turns into public space. In Peterborough, the question is not whether parks matter. The question is whether we understand what they are actually worth — in dollars, in health, in tourism, and in the quiet daily sanity of having somewhere green to go.