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Officials celebrate renovation of park
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Mayor Doug Franklin sat at a picnic table inside the renovated pavilion at Southwest Park on Palmyra Road Southwest next to Cheryl Saffold, a member of city council, and remembered when both of them were kids.
“When I played Little Raiders, she was a cheerleader,” Franklin said.
Southwest Park was nicer then, but it fell into disrepair and disuse for about two decades.
Two years ago, Franklin and the Southwest Neighborhood Association made the park a high priority.
Since then, more than $4,000 has been spent to clean up the park, its playground equipment, improve the pavilion and get the grass cut.
Another $11,000 was spent to buy new playground equipment.
“To see where it is was and where it is now it’s just a wonderful occasion,” Saffold said last week during a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“It’s been a two-year process. We’ve worked through hurdle after hurdle,” Franklin said.
The money for the improvements came from the nonprofit organization Trumbull 100, the Raymond John Wean Foundation, Warren’s Community Development Department, Laborer’s Union Local 935 of Warren and Trumbull Community Action Program, which is just across Palmyra Road from the park.
Already, the improvements have allowed the community to use the 15-acre park for football games and practices. Next up are plans to supply equipment for soccer and baseball.
Having a nice park in the southwest area means people will have a nice place to have picnics, said Rhonda Williamson Bennett, president of Southwest Neighborhood Association,
“Having a facility here, kids don’t have to go so far away. If people want to have picnics, they don’t have to go to Perkins and Packard parks,” she said.
TCAP will be a partner with the park in that it is helping with the renovation, planning to use the park for its programming and has the ability to monitor its use from its nearby location, said Eleanor Williamson, a member of Southwest Neighborhood Association.
TCAP provides early-childhood education to low-income Trumbull County residents.
“It’s a beginning,” Franklin said of the work that’s been done so far at the park. “I ask especially that the youth step forward.”