BY MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
GLASGOW NEWS 1
Members of the Glasgow Common Council Planning and Development Committee got to see two proposed options this week for how to redo American Legion Park.
The panel, also known as the council Parks and Recreation Committee, met with Pat Hoagland, vice president of Brandstetter Carroll, a design and consulting firm hired to produce a master plan of all the city’s park systems a few years ago and then rehired recently to revisit how to best make use of this particular city property.
The city’s public swimming pool has been on its last leg for years, and Eddie Furlong, director of the Glasgow Parks and Recreation Department, said he’s surprised each additional year they’re able to use it, and its time is definitely expiring.
This photo of an illustration provided to a Glasgow council committee this week shows the proposed aquatic area that could be constructed in American Legion Park in the vicinity of the current ballfield. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
The ballfield at the top of hill in the park behind the pool isn’t used much, and that relatively flat area is larger than where the pool is along Ky. 90 – Happy Valley Road – now, so Hoagland said the best place to build any type of aquatic feature is at the back where the ballfield is, plus it could help some with traffic congestion at the park/pool entrance.
According to both of the options he presented as possibilities, an existing larger shelter and playground area and the parking area at the top of the hill would remain essentially where they are, but the driveway to access those items and the aquatic area – not a standard swimming pool – would wind around past where the summer camp building is now and continue up the hill. The one-way drives that current take visitors to the top of the hill and then loop around for the exit would become pedestrian paths. The camp building would go away, but that type of facility would be incorporated into the pool house.
The differences in the options are at the lower elevation. Both would have another playground area.
Option 1 has a full basketball court and small number of parking spaces roughly where the camp building is now. The area closer to the entrance, where the pool is now, would have four pickleball and four tennis courts.
Pat Hoagland, vice president of Brandstetter Carroll design and consulting firm, discusses an illustration of a portion of what he calls Master Plan Option 2 for American Legion Park to a Glasgow council committee earlier this week. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
Option 2 gets rid of the basketball court and moves the pickleball courts up to that area, plus it adds a fifth tennis court and bleachers.
Councilman Terry Bunnell, an avid tennis player and an organizer of the annual Weldon Tennis Tournament, said he’s not a fan of having the tennis courts so near the road because it’s noisier there and not aesthetically pleasing.
“That location for tennis will not work,” he said.
He had hoped the tennis courts would be at the top of the hill, but Hoagland said that to do the new pool well, its needs to be up there because of the amount of flat area.
Considerable discussion took place regarding alternate locations for the tennis courts and what else could go at that area of American Legion if tennis isn’t there. The group also explored the idea of whether additional routes for entrances and exits could be possible, but the elevation differences – and added expense that would bring – were a key hindrance to the latter.
Glasgow Councilman Terry Bunnell, right, discusses his ideas for how American Legion Park should be redesigned as Eddie Furlong, director of the Glasgow Parks and Recreation Department, looks at an illustration of proposed options created by a design consultant. MELINDA J. OVERSTREET / GLASGOW NEWS 1
“At the end of the day,” Furlong said, “we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to pay for this.”
Councilman Patrick Gaunce asked Hoagland for a pricetag on what he’d proposed.
Hoagland said it was a very rough estimate, but he was thinking around $10.5 million with design cost included, which then led to discussion of whether it would be better to pay cash for the project – but over two fiscal years, as the project would be done in phases anyway – or fund it with a bond issue or do some combination of those.
Bunnell, who is a banker, suggested that perhaps about 60 percent could be cash with the rest done through bonds.
Mayor Henry Royse said it’s time to move on this project one way or the other.
The consensus seemed to be the city could start with getting more detailed designs for the area on the hill, since they were mostly in agreement about what would go there, and then they could consider further options on what could go in the lower part in the meantime. Nothing definite was decided at this point, however.
Hoagland was going to do some additional work on the illustrations to bring back for the next meeting.
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