Fairground Park Update: Good Conversations, Slow and Steady Progress
Wanted to give the neighborhood a quick update after a good meeting this week with City staff and Fairground Park Association board members.
A few highlights:
Fundraising strategy is coming into focus. Everyone agreed that landing one larger donor will likely be more effective than piecing together lots of smaller gifts. We also talked about the City's role in leading fundraising efforts, since the park is a City asset, and there's shared interest in that happening.
A promising conversation is in the works. City staff have a meeting scheduled in early October with leadership from a local organization that's been part of informal conversations about the park going back over the last year. Nothing is committed yet, but there's cautious optimism that it could lead somewhere. We shared our existing renderings and rough project cost estimates in case they're useful for that conversation.
Community engagement timing. The City feels it's still early for finalized designs, and wants to lead a community engagement process similar to what's been done for other City parks, to make sure all our neighbors' input is captured. We're eager to keep momentum going and will stay closely engaged as that process takes shape.
A blast from the past. At the meeting, we got to see some park master plan designs from years back, apparently put together by one of our members in 2003, showing a basketball court, gazebo, and play structure. No one's totally sure who created them, and there don't appear to be digital copies floating around, but it was a cool glimpse into long-standing community interest in improving this park.
Good news on equipment. A slide and a climbing feature from Lions park have been identified as good fits for our structure, and there's hope they could be installed in the next few weeks, once fall festivities wrap up.
Elsewhere:
We applied for a $25,000 grant to help fund materials. It was a detailed application, and we'll share more as we hear back.
More updates to come as the October conversations wrap up. Thanks for sticking with us.
