English Park will receive renovations in the near future, but the City’s Parks and Recreation Department is accepting public input at a meeting today before moving forward with any plans.
Parks Director Amanda Rogers recently said the priority of renovating that park was raised following a Master Plan survey and community input.
“That’s what helped prioritize it and why we’re getting it so quickly,” Rogers said. “There were a handful of locations that were designated as locations that could be really good to look at that maybe are not servicing the community at the level they should. English Park was one of those.”
The meeting today will introduce the community to the Lose Design team, the project’s designers. It will start at 5:30 p.m. at the Administrative building at 1530 McJohnson Avenue.
Guests and residents will be able to speak about their desires for the park grounds so the design company can work to accommodate those services. While Rogers did not say what she feels the park’s full potential could be, she is interested in finding out what the community wishes for the park to provide.
English Park has been used both for locally hosted events and for tourism in the past.
“I think those will be two big focuses: How can we serve that local taxpayer and what can we do that might be enticing to bring people from other communities to our community and leave those dollars here in our economy to cycle through,” Rogers said.
As described in the Parks’ Master Plan, that goal for English Park is to “transform it into a versatile community space, strategically integrating creative design elements and infrastructure enhancements, to optimize its potential as a destination for a wide range of events and activities.”
These renovations would mark the first since the Parks Master Plan was completed in April. The Parks Master Plan received input from 284 residents and can be found here.
For those who cannot attend the meeting, Rogers said her office plans to have some form of feedback portal for people to share their input in the future.
Rogers said there are no bad suggestions or recommendations for what English Park could become.
“We probably will face no shortage of good ideas, but potentially a shortage of funds,” she said. “I think that there are going to be endless amounts of great ideas for that location. It’ll really be thinking about what might serve the broadest picture.”
