City adds funds to advance design for neighborhood parks

The groundwork will be laid this year for improvements to two neighborhood parks thanks to additional city funding.

The City Council voted Tuesday to add $130,000 to its budget this year for design work at Willow Ridge Park and Whispering Woods South Park.

“This is really just an opportunity to prioritize neighborhood parks and get a few designed this year so we can start construction next year,” said council member Miranda Bayse, who proposed the amendment to the city’s budget.

Willow Ridge at 7900 E. Willow Wood St. and Whispering Woods South at 5820 S. Bahnson Ave. both have a playground and open field for soccer.

“That’s typically how we develop neighborhood parks,” said Mike Patten, city park development manager. “We get in there early and get them flat with grass and trees planted. After the neighborhood grows up, we add a play structure, sport court, whatever the neighborhood identifies as a priority.”

The city will hold neighborhood meetings and likely do a survey “to get a pulse of what people who live around the park would like to see,” he said. “And from that point, we’d go into design and adopt a master plan and look to program construction funding.”

That kind of activity generally occurs five to 10 years after site development.

“You don’t do yourself justice developing the whole park before the neighborhood because you don’t know who will live around it and what they’d like to see,” Patten said.

“Typically, the experiences are a basketball court, a variety of playground elements, picnic shelter, gathering space, and walking loops have been popularly lately.”

Neighborhood parks are heavily used for baseball, soccer and football practice, “so open green space to show up and practice is really important,” Patten said. “We typically try to maximize green space as much as we can.”