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Nancy Brunnemer's goals since retiring last month are simple. She wants to visit local parks and greenways.
That seems natural for someone who spent 27 years on the job, but not for the obvious reasons. Brunnemer wants to take stock of her life's work.
As a Mecklenburg County real estate manager and park planner, she helped set aside more than 13,000 acres for the county's park system - most of the nearly 18,000 acres it owns.
Deals she negotiated made way for Jetton Park in Cornelius and the stretch of Little Sugar Creek Greenway under construction along Kings Drive near uptown.
Now Brunnemer, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in geography from UNC Charlotte, wants to see how well her park projects have turned out.
Creating parks and greenways takes time. Usually years passed between when the Gastonia native began negotiating for land and the day a park opened. Construction is still years away on some.
When she visits, Brunnemer, 67, hopes to find green spaces that live up to the vision she kept through all of the meetings, negotiations and often long waits as she pulled together clusters of land.
"You're creating a place to have memories, where when people grow up they'll remember that place," said Brunnemer, a Stonehaven resident. "Kids, adults and older people are going to be there, and Little League games. You'll have grandparents taking their grandchildren to the parks."
As development began to soar in Mecklenburg in the 1980s, the county scrambled to set aside land for the park system envisioned in its master plan.
In 1999, Mecklenburg voters approved $220 million in bonds, primarily for land for parks. Brunnemer shifted into high-gear.
Sometimes her negotiations with property owners dragged on for years. Many times she needed multiple parcels for a project. When a property had multiple owners, they often had varying interest in selling or different ideas about an acceptable price.
Often there were piles of paperwork to manage before county commissioners could sign off on a deal.
"As far as the greenways were concerned, that was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle," she said.
Brunnemer made presentations to the county commissioners twice monthly as she worked to get approvals for projects, but the demands for recreation space were even greater.
Residents often complained. In 2006, Steele Creek residents petitioned the county, saying that the county was moving too slowly to acquire land for a greenway trail in their community.
A few years earlier, Druid Hills residents became frustrated by delays when the county sold park land at one site then bought more at another that city planners said was more centrally located.
"There would be many reasons to be very uptight and tense much of the time," said Mark Hahn, county Real Estate Services director, who worked with Brunnemer for the past eight years. "She just didn't let things rattle her. If you're like that, everyone around you tends to be more relaxed."
State Rep. Ruth Samuelson, R-Mecklenburg, a member of the Little Sugar Creek Greenway action committee and a county commissioner from 2000 to 2004, said she sometimes wanted results from Brunnemer right away. Brunnemer, she said, is more deliberate. Samuelson came to trust and rely on her.
"The trick as a commissioner was finding staff people who also want to get things done, who will think creatively and keep an open mind," she said. "Nancy was one of those."
If the job taught Brunnemer anything, it was the value of patience. It might take generations, but her legacy will continue to give residents reasons and resources for enjoying the outdoors.
"When I was frustrated, that was the thing that I would realize," Brunnemer said. "What we were putting in place was going to make a difference forever in this county."
