Recommendation highlights: improve access – add more parking – centralize concessions – lengthen train ride – replace ballfield with ‘community lawn’
Burlington’s recreation department has unveiled a long-term plan for the development of City Park that proposes to increase parking, reduce flooding, and make it easier to get around this signature recreation facility.
This proposed master plan for City Park made its formal debut before Burlington’s city council last week, marking the end of a months-long process that the recreation department launched this past winter with some financial support from the nonprofit New Leaf Society.
According to Tony Laws, the city’s recreation director, the aim of this project was to come up with some concrete suggestions to improve the public’s overall experience of the park, whose attractions include the Maynard Aquatic Center, Burlington’s antique Dentzel Carousel, and the city’s new pickleball complex.
“City Park is our oldest park. It is one of our largest parks, and it is right in the center of town,” Laws went on to recall during a city council work session last Monday. “It is also our most used park, and it has the most amenities.”
The plan’s actual details were laid out for the council by Graham Smith, a consultant with the Raleigh-based Site Collaborative, which the recreation department enlisted to help with this venture.
Smith told the council that his firm ultimately helped city staff members nail down a “25-year road map” for the park – with recommendations to create “a sense of place” for parkgoers, improve the park’s “ecological health,” and “expand upon its popular assets.” He mentioned other proposals that seek to make the park easier to navigate for both vehicles and pedestrians.
[Story continues below graphic of existing park facilities and recommendations for the future.]
Smith said that one of the key takeaways from his firm’s preliminary inquiries was the difficulties that many area residents have getting around the park’s sprawling grounds.
“Getting into City Park is not that hard,” he went on to concede. “But figuring out where you want to go is another thing.”
In order to address this struggle with orientation, Smith has recommended some changes to signage and the park’s internal network of footpaths. He also advised the city to relocate services like the park’s ticket office and concession stand, which he insisted are much too remote from the centers of activity at the park.
Smith went on to suggest that the city could repurpose a now vacant pergola that had once housed Burlington’s iconic Dentzel Carousel into a concession building. He also recommended moving the ticket office to a more prominent spot near the Carousel’s new multi-million-dollar enclosure.
The consultant went on to suggest some changes that would make it easier for people to drive to the park. Among other things, he urged the city to reopen Overbrook Drive, which effectively cuts through the center of the park’s sprawling grounds. At the moment, the convenience of this boulevard is undermined by a pair of gates on either side of the road’s centrally-located roundabouts. Smith recommended that the city take out these gates and modify the roundabouts to discourage drivers from gunning it across Overbrook Drive.
“We’re proposing a little bit of traffic engineering where you’ll have to make a right turn,” he added. “People won’t be able to fly through there, but you will be able to get from one side of the park to another without going back out to the main road.”
Smith also proposed an expansion of the facility’s on-site parking, which presently amounts to a little less than 900 spaces. He conceded that the current quota of parking tends to run out during events like the city’s annual Carousel Festival. To wit, he proposed an additional 200 parking spaces to augment the existing spots.
Another focal point of Smith’s presentation was the periodic flooding that comes from the creek which meanders along the grounds of the park. The consultant observed that the city could reduce this tendency by expanding the area designated as floodplain.
In the meantime, he recommended that the city eliminate several softball fields that were developed atop a decommissioned municipal dump. Smith pointed out that the city constantly has to haul in fill soil to refurbish the fields as the ground beneath them continues to settle. He added that the city could forgo these Sisyphean labors if it converted the fields to “community lawns.”
“We’re proposing that the city discontinue the use of those fields on the landfill due to money, liability, and other things,” he added. “This gives this park back to a passive experience…people still have a place to gather, and you still have a place to program. It just won’t be programmed for softball.”
A final suggestion from the consultant was to enhance the park’s most popular attractions, such as a kid-friendly train that wends its way through the amusement area. Smith shared a proposal to extend the train’s circuit from 1,200 to as much as 5,000 feet.
“Once you do that,” he added, “you have to fence certain areas off and control how pedestrians cross.”
In any event, Smith said that the council can proceed with these various improvements in bits and pieces as the necessary funds become available.
“There’s definitely some 20-to-25-year projects in this,” he acknowledged. It’s not expected to happen overnight.”
The council, for its part, agreed to add the proposed master plan to the agenda for its regularly-scheduled meeting on October 7.
