Chapel Hill's new director of Parks and Recreation has spent much of his life at a considerable altitude.

A graduate of Appalachian State University in Boone with a degree in recreation administration, Kisiah has worked for the past 11 years as the Recreation Division superintendent for Asheville.

Kisiah understands he can't literally move mountains in Chapel Hill, but he certainly intends to raise the level of local recreation.

Having assumed his duties on June 4, Kisiah inherited a tall challenge of meeting a fiercely active community's demands for play and activity space, and it is a challenge Kisiah said he's eager to face.

"There weren't many communities that I would leave Asheville for, but Chapel Hill was one of them," he said. "It is a university town, and there's just so much going on. ... It was a great opportunity."

As much as anything else, though, the discussions Kisiah had with Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil and his staff sold the former Mountaineer on the Triangle.

"What I've found in Chapel Hill so far is that there's a great deal of support for Parks and Recreation programs," Kisiah said. "It's evident from the community and from the town manager's office. When you have that support, that's a real positive."

"Our citizens expect the Parks and Recreation Department to protect the town's natural resources while also providing superior recreational, cultural, and educational services," Stancil said in a release issued upon Kisiah's hiring in May. "We are pleased to attract an individual with outstanding qualifications to promote excellence."


Good and bad

A 30-year veteran of public service, Kisiah has worked as a regional consultant for North Carolina State Parks, as a general manager for the Beech Mountain Club, and as the Forest City director of Parks and Recreation.

Kisiah's distinctions include the National Recreation and Park Association National Young Professional Award (1990), the Distinguished Service Award (1993 and 1995) from the North Carolina State Park System, and the N.C. Recreation and Park Association Distinguished Fellow Award (2002).

Despite a lower altitude in Chapel Hill, Kisiah said he sees many things in common with the communities in which he formerly worked.

"One of the things that strikes me is the similarities in the diversity, and the variety of cultural activities is very similar," he said.

Kisiah emphasized that his familiarity with a university setting should expedite the learning curve in Chapel Hill.

"There are certainly challenges here, but there's nothing that I haven't really seen before," he said. "I've been doing this for around 30 years now in different locations, and there's good and bad in every community."

While many associate Parks and Recreation solely with more traditional indoor and outdoor play space (i.e., softball fields and basketball courts), Kisiah said one goal would be to look at space for other indoor activities.

"We just don't have much classroom space," he said. "The issue over the pottery studio is a great example. It's a well-established program, and we have to pick it up and move it somewhere else.

"We have more demand for facility use -- indoor or outdoor space. There's a whole lot of demand here, and we're having a hard time meeting it. ... We need a commitment in the community to provide additional indoor recreation space for arts, music, dance and cultural activities."


Loved to death

Kisiah noticed another challenge upon his arrival: high demand for and overuse of playing fields.

"One thing I noticed right off when I came down here was the condition of some of the athletic fields," he said. "They're nice fields, but they're loved to death."

"We've probably got enough fields to take care of the games, but we're nowhere close when you start thinking of practices and future league expansions," he added. "Right now, we're tearing up our game fields to have our practices."

While Kisiah was happy to be able to count on the re-opening of the Chapel Hill Community Center, the completion of a new aquatics center in 2008, and the addition of the Southern Community Park, he still contended that Chapel Hill would need to look at new ways to meet the demand for play spaces.

"It could be that we have to look at additional land acquisition, as well as the possibility of using new technologies to help us," he explained. "For example, I think the community needs to look at the use of artificial turf.

"We'd just gotten into that in Asheville, and we'd just completed a four-field soccer complex. You can play on it all of the time. If it rains, it doesn't matter; you don't have to worry about maintenance. You just play."


The right place

"It's a very active community," he added. "There are great medical facilities around. People understand the need for healthy living. They're more active, they are out, and they are participating, but they need green spaces, they need indoor spaces, and there are only so many resources."

Kisiah said he understands that he can't move forward without public support and a clear view of what people in the community want, however.

"One of the things I'd like to do is have a review of our master plan," he said. "It's something our department did back in 2001, and we need to go through another public process to find out what people think.

"It's been seven or eight years: let's find out what people are thinking; what would people like to see. People have good ideas, and I'd like to hear them. It also gives me an opportunity to meet folks and get known in the community."

Kisiah understands that he faces some precipitous terrain. Bolstered by the support of the community and aided by his staff, however, he feels that the sky's the limit for Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation.

"There are some great people here," he said. "I'm real happy with the staff we have here-they're good folks, and they want to do a good job. From the folks I've met in the community, I've come to the right place."