When Kyle Randall walks by the Tim Freudenberg Memorial Park in Newport, he feels there could be more than the aging playground equipment that’s currently there.
“The park as it is right now exists for a very niche audience, which is like that primary school age kid,” Randall told Newport Commissioners at a Monday meeting. “The plan here is to really make a space that's inviting to all.”
Randall is part of the Westside Citizens Coalition and suggested turning the playground into a community garden months ago. After extensive planning, the coalition submitted a comprehensive plan to the city: a multi-phase project that would remove the playground and add a pollinator garden, numerous garden beds, ADA-compliant features, a shaded structure and the removal of invasive tree species.
Planning and Zoning Director Brian Steffen presented the plan to commissioners as part of the city’s Parks and Projects update.
“First and foremost, removal of the park equipment — that's really a public works function,” Steffen said. “And in order to be able to salvage anything that is salvageable or reusable for the future [the city] would obviously want to undertake that.”
The rest of the phases, Steffen said, include extending the water line, removing invasive pear trees and other vegetation.
The coalition is not asking the city to fund the project, but just to provide removal and maintenance support in the early stages.
“Even something like removal of trees,” Randall said. “If we were to contract that out, that's going to be really expensive. Whereas the city has employees being paid hourly anyways, so when times are slow and they're renting the stump grinder and they already have a place to dump the wood it can be a very minimal cost to them.”
Steffen said this would be possible, since the city already does a lot of maintenance to areas around the park.
“We're very open to the idea of it, just because there is a lot of maintenance down there,” he said. “Public Works is down there a lot, doing cleanup and maintenance of the grounds, and wood chips; the whole thing.”
The Freudenberg Memorial Park is not the only ongoing park project in the city. Officials are working with designers for a new Mansion Hill Park — so removing the playground and making this park a garden would not be a huge loss to the neighborhood, Steffen said.
“The focus then becomes ‘what can we do to better the other parks’ versus trying to spread this out to this little park,” he said, pointing to other parks within a couple of blocks from Freudenberg Memorial Park.
Commissioners liked the idea, but wanted to hear feedback from residents outside the Westside Citizen Coalition. City Manager John Hayden said that can be arranged, but with guardrails around who provides the feedback.
“What we don't want to have is individuals that never visit this park weighing in and their voice being weighted too heavily versus individuals that do live there, utilize it, and would use the garden,” Hayden said.
Commissioners didn’t make a decision Monday night, but Randall hopes to get started soon so the garden can bloom next season.
“We would love to see it take place in the spring,” he said. “So that would mean that we would need to get started in the coming month or two, I would think.”
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