New park in the works

A makeover is planned for one Greenwood city park, and a new park is being added into the system.

A dog park and extra picnic shelter is proposed for Westside Park, and city officials plan to gather community feedback on what a new park on 10 acres of land along Worthsville Road should encompass.

The remodeling project at Westside Park includes adding a one-acre dog park, moving a set of playground equipment and building an additional picnic shelter, Greenwood Parks and Recreation Director Rob Taggart said.

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The 27-acre park is on the north side of Main Street, west of the Averitt Road roundabout. Pleasant Creek cuts through the park, which has walking trails, a softball diamond, tennis courts, playgrounds and a picnic shelter.

The proposed remodel of the park is in the planning stages, Taggart said. The cost of the project hasn’t been determined yet.

Greenwood has dog parks at both University Park and Freedom Park. The dog parks, which require an annual $50 fee, have about 1,000 members, Taggart said.

Westside Park was chosen as a location for a new dog park because of its central location in the city, he said. The dog park will be on the northeast side of the property.

Re-arranging the playground equipment at the park will make room for another picnic shelter and provide a better use of the space, Taggart said.

The city also is getting more parkland with the addition of Grassy Park, 10 acres of land on the north side of Worthsville Road east of U.S. 31.

“We couldn’t be more excited to adding to the parks inventory and land,” Taggart said.

Grassy Park will be the 15th city park. Greenwood currently has 14 parks on 271 acres of land. A 2015 study of Greenwood’s recreational amenities by planning consultants Lehman & Lehman labeled open park space as a top priority.

The new park long has been the plan for the former concrete plant on Worthsville Road. The Greenwood Redevelopment Commission purchased the land for $1 million in 2012 as part of the Worthsville Road expansion and later spent about $600,000 to clean up the site.

A portion of the land was used for a retention pond on the east side of the property, which was necessary to account for the extra runoff from the widened road. A parking lot with connections to nearby trails was also built on the site.

The plan for the park hasn’t been determined yet, as public input is needed, Taggart said.

“We will have a blank canvas to work with,” he said. “We want to reach out to community in that area and get their input.”

How that input will be gathered hasn’t been determined yet, but one possibility is to have community open houses to get feedback, Taggart said.