PROSPERITY — The Town of Prosperity was awarded $770,000 through the CPST program for the Town Center Park located behind Town Hall.
This money will help fund various additions the Town of Prosperity is looking to add including tennis courts, new lighting and a new multi-purpose field.
“That $770,000, we also had $30,000 that we put with it, which is a PARD (Parks and Recreation Development) grant for the walking track. So in all, we have $800,000 to spend on this project,” said Town Administrator Karen Livingston. “The original project was tennis courts, new lighting at the Dixie Youth field, parking at the Dixie Youth field and then tennis courts behind Town Hall, a football, soccer multi-purpose field over on Brown St. and the walking track.”
Council also looked over proposed plans for the Dixie Youth ball park, which will have two parking lots, with lighting being completed on these fields. It will have new poles, lights and controls that are keyed, with no timers.
“These are not going to be asphalted, they are going to have four inches of stone and gravel, but there will a concrete pad handicapped parking at both fields,” Livingston said.
Council also discussed preliminary plans for downtown one way and parking.
Discussion was brought up on possibly angling parking spaces, despite the possibility of losing some parking.
“When you have a rectangle and you move it to a 35 or 45 degree angle, then you have a triangle down at the bottom left and a triangle at the top right. Mathematically, you would be losing two spots,” said Councilman Chad Hawkins.
“We’re trying to add more parking, if that’s our objective. Your going to take away some of the grass, but your going to rectangle that square up instead of it being a triangle,” said Livingston.
Livingston called upon Councilman Hawkins to hear his opinion whether he felt this would work or slant the spaces.
“You can square it up a little bit, but it’s not going to be too much,” said Hawkins.
Councilman Robert Martin said that after going into town and counting the available parking spaces from the drug store to both sides of the railroad tracks, there are currently 87 parking spots.
“The one way street idea is great, but if we put signage that needs to be done we don’t need to change the parking that we’ve got now. We’ve got adequate parking we’re just not using it,” said Martin.
Livingston suggested that before moving further on the project, create signage that will direct drivers to available parking.
“We could have a sign made that looks like the welcome sign, but with parking. Signage can come out of Hospitality, wayfinding can, so if that’s the route we want to take to start with that’s fine,” said Livingston. “There are signs but they’re old and they don’t jump out at you.”
Martin also suggested lighting the sidewalk paths towards the ground by installing shorter lights and the possibility of motion-detected or solar lights.
Council decided to pursue possible signage, lighting for pathways and determining what the cost would be to conduct a traffic study before moving further with the project.