A cross-country route in Palo Corona Regional Park sparks tension.

Take a walk on the Rancho Cañada portion of Palo Corona Regional Park, and you can see a remarkable transformation in action. The former golf course, which was designed in 1970 by Robert Dean Putnam, is being gradually overtaken by nature. Where there were once sand traps, there are now young trees. Where there was once manicured grass there is now a thriving test plot of various native species: black sage, buckwheat, bush lupine, California fuchsia.

“This is habitat in evolution,” says Scott Hennessy, a retired director of planning for Monterey County and now devoted volunteer, who estimates 15,000 seeds were planted on this particular plot.

A short walk away, cutting across the zig-zag of old golf cart paths, Hennessy shows me his larger restoration area, where he planted hundreds of trees – willows, buckeyes, oaks.

Today, there’s not much to see of this habitat restoration project. The earth has been graded and wide paths laid for a cross-country race course.

Hennessy is understandably perturbed – many of his plants are gone. But his grievance is not just personal. There are bigger questions about who a park serves: How do you balance habitat restoration with recreation?

This very question arose when the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District board met on July 28, and board member Kelly Sorenson voiced concerns. [“There’s a sense] we apparently are granting access priority over habitat,” he said. “If that’s the perception, that concerns me.”

MPRPD General Manager Rafael Payan responded: “We are the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District, not regional conservation district… we are a park district, which impels that aspect of providing public access.”

Here’s where the tension comes in. Surely, the park district does have a duty to increase public access, and they are doing that. The 2016 acquisition of the Rancho Cañada property instantly increased access to Palo Corona, thanks to a parking lot. But the challenge is in the details. In crafting a general development plan for this park, a two-year process that saw 354 people attend three public workshops and 1,895 people respond to online surveys, the district tried to blend the public’s wishes. Disc golf didn’t make the cut; a staging area for Cal Fire and a dog park did.

The plan also features a 1,000-foot-wide wildlife corridor, an area animals frequently use to travel to the Carmel River. Now, a running path cuts across it.

One problem with building across a wildlife corridor is that various agencies committed to the park acquisition – and funding – with conservation in mind.

For example, the $2 million grant agreement from the California State Coastal Conservancy reads: “The acquisition purposes are: wildlife habitat, environmental restoration, floodplain restoration, open space protection, public access, dedication of water rights to instream flows, and general park purposes.”

It’s a long list of goals, which can at times be in conflict.

The course is the creation of the nonprofit Big Sur Marathon Foundation, which designed the route and raised over $300,000 to build it. The nonprofit pitched the idea to MPRPD, then hired a contractor to make it happen. “There’s almost nowhere for kids to run anywhere,” foundation board member Hank Armstrong says. “It’s gotten harder and harder.”

The dream is to host up to 10 events a year, for youth through college runners. (The first race, hosted by Carmel Middle School, is set for Sept. 10.)

Armstrong says the original vision was to have runners cross the Carmel River to the south bank on bridges, but a separate – and much bigger – floodplain restoration project is happening there, with the planning now at about 65-percent completion. So the foundation realigned the track, not realizing it was in the middle of another sensitive area.

Armstrong is ready to envision moving it some day, ideally as part of the floodplain project. “It’s beautiful, it’s shady – it’s better there, frankly,” he says. “If it needs to go somewhere else, we’ll make it happen.”

Nobody disagrees about getting kids out to Palo Corona to run races. It’s simply a matter of designing it in balance that with a parallel vision for conservation. That requires a lot of work – and getting this once-in-a-lifetime park right is worth the effort.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com