LITTLE MOUNTAIN — The Town of Little Mountain is currently working to develop a master plan for making safety and landscaping improvements to Reunion Park.
A public meeting was held in December for the community to present their concerns or suggestions about Reunion Park to Council and Rick McMackin, RLA (Registered Landscape Artist), ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects), The LandPlan Group South.
“The purpose of the meeting was for everyone in the community who was interested to come and give us ideas of what they would like to see at Reunion Park, what they think is wrong currently with Reunion Park, things that have been problematic for them when they use the park and ideas on what they would like to see in the way of an expansion of the park,” said Mayor Jana Jayroe.
Jayroe added that a few months ago the town purchased three more adjoining lots to the park, allowing for additional space. With the additional lots, and Little Mountain continuing to grow, it was decided to contact the LandPlan Group South to come up with a master plan.
“We thought that would be the best use of our money and our resources so we knew where to point what was needed by the community and also, right now as the park has grown we kind of added on this part, added on this part and we kind of need a cohesiveness that is currently lacking, especially when it comes to helping people with disabilities,” she said. “We felt that part of the park is just too difficult for anybody in a wheelchair or someone pushing a stroller so we felt that professional help was absolutely the best way to go for us to help us make sure we can accommodate anyone whose interested in coming down there.”
One of the most requested items heard from the community were handicap accessible bathrooms, particularly near the ball field and near the bottom of the park near the picnic shelter area.
“Right now you have to hike up the hill to go to the bathroom, or you have to go back up the gravel trail to the entrance of the park to use wheelchair accessible bathrooms,” Jayroe said.
More playground equipment for children was also suggested. Jayroe said while the playground at the elementary school is used a lot, by having it in the park instead would help the school out with any wear and tear problems they have with the equipment, along with more shade during the summer.
She added that, as a town, they would also like to have a facility in the park to sell tickets.
“We would like to see an amphitheatre-type facility somewhere in the park that would allow us to close it off and have events where we would sell tickets. We thought we could use that for a fundraiser to help out the town and also help out the Little Mountain Reunion, also if somebody wanted to rent it and have some type of fundraiser, a group or somebody that would like to rent it, that way with a fence around it we could control the ticket sales,” she said.
McMackin, who helped run the meeting, also asked the town about the barbecue pit. The town is not planning on eliminating the barbecue pit, but asked the land plan architect to look for needed improvements or additions to the pit.
Water issues were also discussed and how moving forward those problems would be addressed.
“We talked about water problems, what would happen with the water, how we could divert some of the water, right now we have this huge amount of mud that comes down the hill and the architects are going to look into that. They will see what we need to do for infrastructure or landscaping or whatever we need to divert the water so it’s not like a bog when you’re trying to walk through,” Jayroe said.
Other requests brought up during the meeting included a dog park (fenced off to allow dogs off of leashes), lights for the ball field and concession stands and a splash pad. Jayroe said they heard many great ideas, but as of right now the bathroom and water problems are at the top of the list.
“We ran into the bathroom problems not only with the Little Mountain Reunion, but the Movies in the Park because Movies in the Park has become very popular and where we’re showing the movies, like I said, you either have to go up the hill to the bathroom or the gravel pathway back to the entrance of the park,” she said.
The town was also asked to look at parking, but Jayroe said she believed that would only be a problem during the Reunion.
“We’re hoping from this master plan to get an idea of what we can do with what we have. Get some ideas that will make it all more usable and at the same time ideas on how we can implement it as we can pay for it,” Jayroe said.
She added they are hoping to begin later this spring or early summer on improvements.
