STARKVILLE — A variety of renovations and additions to local parks in the next few years are under consideration, including a skate park, a wheelchair-accessible playground, a new Moncrief Park pool house and the movement of Starkville’s community garden from one park to another.
Parks and Recreation Executive Director Gerry Logan presented a summary of planned and anticipated capital projects for the next three fiscal years, including how much money would be spent on each park and project, to the board of aldermen at a Friday work session.
Aldermen will consider at Tuesday’s meeting the designs for the additions of new restrooms at Moncrief Park, Patriot’s Park and the J.L. King Park football field. The three projects will cost $130,000, according to Logan’s presentation data.
The board previously gave feedback on the designs of the renovations and will hopefully vote to approve them Tuesday, Mayor Lynn Spruill said.
The other project for the aldermen to consider is a $100,000 renovation of the Moncrief Park pool, including a new deck, a new pool house and likely an updated filtration system, Logan said. Meridian-based LPK Architects are already working on the design of the new Moncrief Park restrooms, so the goal is for them to add the pool renovations to their project, Logan said.
Three of the four tennis courts at McKee Park will be resurfaced this week, and the fourth will be converted into a pickleball court.
“We have a very active pickleball group and they’re very excited to get a permanent court,” Logan said. “It will be one of the first in the state.”
The department is in the “research phase” of replacing a playground unit at McKee Park with a wheelchair-accessible unit during the 2019-20 fiscal year, and Logan said he is looking into grants that could help pay for the $250,000 project.
The department is also considering adding gates to some parks and more security cameras to high-visibility areas, but those projects are not set in stone, Logan said.
Much of the funding for the parks projects will come from tourism tax revenue that voters approved increasing by 1 percent earlier this year to build a tournament-ready field and Cornerstone Park and make other capital improvements.
Longer-term goals
One goal for the 2020-21 fiscal year is to remove the overgrown community garden at Josey Park and create a new one at J.L. King Park.
“If there’s going to be a spot for a public garden and public produce, we believe that’s a better use of our efforts than to just do away with the garden that’s currently at Josey Park,” Logan said.
Other goals for 2020-21 include adding a playground at Josey Park, replacing the roof on the Travis Outlaw Center at the Starkville Sportsplex, additions to the J.L. King splash pad and several renovations at George Evans Park, for a total of $270,000.
For the 2021-22 fiscal year, the parks department has “had some very, very brief discussions” about building a skate park due to recent displays of public interest, Logan said.
“It’s kind of like a new pool facility, that every now and then it’ll rear up and there will be a lot of call for it in a short time,” he said.
The city could use grants to pay for the skate park, which would cost $250,000, but it has to be in a “very, very proper” location, Logan said. He also said “wish list” item on the department’s agenda is to create a park from city-owned property on Academy Road, west of South Montgomery Street.
The park that will cost the most to renovate over the next three years is McKee Park at $290,000, and J.L. King Park is next at $160,000, according to the presentation data. Josey Park will cost the least at $30,000.
Cornerstone Park
Later, the board received an update on the design of Cornerstone Park, which should be completed in the spring or early summer of 2021, said Dean Thomas, a principal landscape architect with the Memphis-based firm Dalhoff-Thomas.
The board will vote Tuesday on the contract with Dalhoff-Thomas, and Spruill said she is “looking forward to getting (the park) moving rapidly.”
Cornerstone Park’s master plan initially includes three total baseball/softball quads, a championship field with stadium-style seating and potentially two additional baseball fields.
“The more we looked it over and the more we had a discussion amongst the design team, we felt that it would be better for us to have the championship field be one of the fields on the quad,” Thomas said.
The design now includes a tee-ball area where the championship field was going to be, he said.
The park will most likely not have a permanent concession stand and instead will have an area for food trucks, he said.
“We’re finding that food trucks seem to be a real draw these days, so why build this expensive concession area?” Thomas said.
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