Airway Heights plans for developing 70-acre park continue to progress

By JAMES EIK

Staff Reporter

Progress on Airway Heights' 70-acre park moved forward last week, with a second meeting to hear what residents want its uses to be.

The city's park board and those in attendance expanded on ideas that were proposed at the first meeting last month. Most of those ideas, according to parks and recreation director J.C. Kennedy, focused on passive, open areas that could be adapted for sports like soccer and rugby. In addition to requests for a dog park, many placed a high importance on versatility.

“Just have a site that's versatile enough and not locked in to any one specific use,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy added that having a larger space to accommodate a particular use, such as a soccer area, would help in a project's fluidity and provide year-round openness. When fields are used rigorously throughout the year, they tend to deteriorate. Having a closed portion of the park will allow grass to fully come back, letting the park function properly throughout the year.

“You want to make sure you have enough space to rotate,” he said.

Basic maps drawn by SPVV Landscape Architects's team, including principal Thomas Sherry, gave a simple explanation of where those areas could go.

“They'll be doing a more enhanced picture,” Kennedy said. “It'll be showing where the trees will be, what the pathways would look like, all of the inner workings.”

Since the park is still in the design phase, the maps only consist of rough areas for potential uses. Sherry and his team will further develop the park's possibilities for the next meeting later this month on April 19.

Although the meeting didn't really cement any decisions, progress continued.

“It was more of a meeting that headed in the right direction, more than anything else,” Kennedy said.

He said the site will use reclaimed water for irrigation, which will open up different funding avenues, compared to a park using potable water. Reception of the concept at the first meeting was very high and popular among those in attendance. The participation was almost equal to that of the first meeting, where dozens of residents showed up to join in the process, he said.

“It's going to open up some funding streams that ordinarily you wouldn't have access to,” Kennedy said.

Acquiring funding for the park, however, is much further down the road.

“You don't even start to look at any of the grant funding until you have a plan that's adopted,” he said.

Other ideas embraced at the first meeting included meandering paths with some reclaimed water features.

The next meeting, April 19, however, is where things should really begin to gain traction towards construction.

“We should have a little bit more refined drawings at that point,” Kennedy said. “That's when we'll definitely have to start focusing on what's going to happen. So I think this next meeting is going to be one of the bigger ones for us.”

James Eik can be reached at [email protected].

 

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