Ideas for Wick Park upgrades offered

By Sean Barron

Better access and lighting were top concerns for many in the audience.

YOUNGSTOWN — Deborah Duffy, Kim Rupe and Keith Slater feel strongly that any movement toward restoring Wick Park should include an all-inclusive playground for youngsters.

“We want to build a playground that’s adaptable for everyone,” said Duffy, an employee of Youngstown city schools.

The three are part of a newly formed nonprofit organization called Wee Can Move Too Inc., which lists as a main goal enhancement of the lives of youngsters by designing more playgrounds that also are accessible to special-needs children.

Duffy, Rupe and Slater were among about 100 people who attended Saturday’s Wick Park Revitalization Community Design workshop at Park Vista Retirement Community, 1216 Fifth Ave., on the city’s North Side.

Duffy, who’s lived on the North Side most of her life, said she remembers walking though the park on her way home from Ursuline High School, as well as using it to play tennis and ice skate. As many industries in the city closed, however, residents moved and upkeep decreased, which contributed to its decline, she noted.

It’s essential the park is modernized to appeal to and entice young people, said Rupe, adding that it would benefit, for example, by offering wireless capabilities to Youngstown State University students and others.

The two-hour session followed a similar meeting earlier this year in which people formed groups to discuss ways they felt the 35-acre park could be improved. This time, two illustrations were presented showing what Wick Park might look like with many of those ideas in the mix.

The drawings included the value of pruning or removing diseased or damaged trees, building an amphitheater, enhancing crosswalks, installing a one-mile looped path around the perimeter, and adding two multipurpose fields and a dog park.

Attendees saw a slide presentation by James S. McKnight detailing, among other things, possible sites for dogs, as well as strategically placed entrances and crosswalks to enhance connections between the park and nearby Park Vista and Stambaugh Auditorium.

McKnight, a landscape architect with Cleveland-based McKnight Associates Ltd., said the pavilion could be made more welcoming by having an enclosed trellis or arbor leading to the entrance.

Also, more low foliage and various types of naturalized vegetation could be planted to improve the health of many trees and lead to better visibility, which can allow people to feel more secure, he continued.

“Visibility to the park is paramount to making people feel safe,” he added.

Other possibilities included more signage, clustered picnic areas, a spray fountain with a re-circulating water system near the playground, reconfigured parking and a stronger relationship between the park and its neighbors, McKnight noted.

Officials also gave participants an opportunity to voice their questions and concerns, as well as what they want to see added, tweaked or excluded.

A YSU student wanted to know about additional security measures, which led McKnight to point to better site lines and lighting, as well as emergency call boxes.

Several people said improved lighting should be a priority, in part to make the park look less intimidating.

One woman said she thought an amphitheater should be built farther from busy Fifth and Park avenues to avoid traffic noise, yet maintain a visual and psychological connection to Stambaugh.

One resident felt that about $1 million should be deducted from the project to accommodate Youngstown’s being a shrinking city.

Another woman suggested that most parking be deeper in the park to give an added sense of safety. The pavilion also could feature a cafe that’s open on weekends, she added.

Neither rendering is a final result, and both likely will be fused to form a hybrid design, noted Terry Schwarz of Kent State University’s Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio. The center is working with local groups on the project, estimated to cost between $1.8 million and $2 million.

Organizations such as Defend Youngstown Inc. and Youngstown CityScape are forging partnerships with YSU and other entities partly to look for funding, some of which also could come from various foundations, noted Sharon Letson of CityScape.

Some type of consensus may be reached, and work might get under way in early 2009, Schwarz predicted.

For more information about the revitalization plan and design proposals, or to access previous meetings, go to www.wickparkproject.info.