North Texas

Arlington Embracing ‘Pokémon Go,' Launches ‘Parkémon' Site

Arlington is embracing the "Pokémon Go" craze in a way few other North Texas cities are.

The city's parks and recreation department recently launched a "Parkémon" website, which maps out where every Pokéstop and Pokémon Gym are located at five of their largest parks.

Parks and recreation assistant director Gary Packan said they began noticing large groups of people coming into the parks to play the game and viewed it as an opportunity to showcase Arlington's parks.

"We have 92 parks in Arlington and a lot of people don't know where half of them are," he said. "So we try to educate our residents and visitors to our community as much as possible. Whether it's Pokémon Go or geo-caching, it's a great way to do that."

Department staff members spent hours walking several miles of trail in each of the parks to make sure they found all of the locations.

"We're trying to make it easy," said Packan. "We want to encourage people to get out and active in our park system. Get out on our trails, get out in our parks, explore our parks."

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