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Courtesy of Kelly Landscape Arch
Homewood Parks and Recreation presented two possible designs for Spring Park on Feb. 1, 2018.
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Courtesy of Kelly Landscape Arch
Homewood Parks and Recreation presented two possible designs for Spring Park on Feb. 1, 2018.
The city plans to give Spring Park a makeover in 2018, with construction starting as soon as March.
At a community meeting at the Lee Center on Feb. 1, Parks and Recreation Director Berkley Squires and Chuck Kelly of Kelly Landscape Architects presented two possible designs to redo the Rosedale neighborhood park.
Squires said his intent is to keep the park as a neighborhood destination rather than allowing rentals. It's "something for you to enjoy," he said to Rosedale residents at the meeting.
Both designs featured several core elements: a large open lawn, a walking trail, a 3,000-square-foot playground for toddlers up to age 12, an 80-person pavilion, grills and restroom facilities. There would also be trees and shrubs to provide both shade and a buffer between the park and surrounding homes and businesses.
Spring Park is just under an acre in size.
The two designs differed mainly in layout. One had a three-cornered lawn area, with the pavilion and restroom near the entrance and the playground on the southeast side of the park. The other had an open area that was peanut-shaped, similar to the lawn at Patriot Park, with the playground incorporated into the lawn inside the walking path, and the pavilion and restrooms on the northwest and southwest ends of the park, respectively.
Kelly said the current layout of Spring Park, including the location of the pavilion and the filled-in former pool, have led to "a lot of paving and hard-scapes" that hinder the use of the park. The designs he created replace that with more multi-use activity areas. They also include some sort of bollards or fencing around the playground, similar to Central Park, for safety.
Other features include new streetlights, parking and benches around the walking path. A small amount of the park is restricted in its function, Kelly said, due to the presence of a power line and underground utilities. However, he said this area could be used by residents for small games like horseshoes or even a community garden plot.
Most residents at the Feb. 1 meeting preferred the design similar to Patriot Park, though they did note that they preferred the closeness of the restrooms and playground in the three-cornered design. Squires said that distance is one of the primary complaints at Central Park.
There was also desire for a splash pad, which Squires said could be incorporated into either design in the future based on park use and continued resident interest.
The budget for the Spring Park redesign is $350,000. Based on resident feedback, Squires said he and the park board would choose a final design for the city to move forward with accepting bids from contractors.
Squires said he would like the city to start construction as soon as March, and the project would take roughly five months to complete.
