“I don’t think all of our renovation plans for parks are going to be as drastic as this one,” Pryor, Brunswick County Parks and Recreation director, said Tuesday.
The previous night, the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners approved unanimously a master plan for redevelopment of the Town Creek District Park. Although the approval didn’t include any spending, the plan calls for nearly $5.2 million in upgrades and altogether new features.
Hosting games for Dixie Youth Baseball and with a steadily used community building, Town Creek’s is the second-most-popular park in the county’s system of 13, according to the county.
After recent public input meetings and a 700-participant survey, planners determined the community most wanted walking trails, a dog park, a modern playground, better ballfields and an expanded community building, the master plan stated.
The planners said also the park, like several others in the county, is not up to date with the Americans With Disabilities Act, primarily because the county developed it before the act’s 1990 creation.
General construction improvements—grading, some demolition, erosion control, cutting the walking trails, new lighting and more—tally $1.2 million in the plan. Improvements marked for the baseball-softball fields come to $1.27 million. Pryor said the plan calls for the relocation of two of the ballfields. Another $1.75 million is requested for soccer field construction, a new “adventure” playground, tennis court renovation, a new basketball court, concessions and restroom facilities and some odds and ends.
“Did you bring a sack of money with you?” county commission chairman Bill Sue quipped Monday night as Pryor and members of the steering committee pitched the improvements.
Brunswick County’s capital improvement plan for next year calls for $1.5 million to implement some of the changes; the rest is up in the air. But the parks and recreation department hopes the master plan will give the county an advantage for funding requests.
“You have to have plans to be able to get grants,” Pryor said. “So we’re going to take the plan and run it through the grant cycle and see if we can get some external funding. And then when we go through the budget year we’ll talk about the capital improvement plan and when we can possibly fit the project in. And that’ll be something that’s up to the commissioners, when we can do it. But having the plan in hand at least allows us to go out and find some grants for different aspects of it all.”
Town Creek District Park topped the Brunswick County Parks and Recreation Advisory Board’s list of parks in need of improvement, and while the list is always subject the change, the latest version considers Waccamaw District Park at Ash and Smithville District Park at Southport next in line.
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