ok so about 3 weeks ago....
Lynchburg unveils plans for newest city park
By Matt Busse
mbusse@newsadvance.com
February 16, 2007
Lynchburg residents will one day enjoy a 24-acre park in western Lynchburg complete with a seven-acre lake for public fishing and canoeing.
A two-story cabin on the land will house the city’s Nature Zone, an educational animal exhibit for children. An arboretum will showcase plants native to Virginia.
And such an ambitious project is planned for an unlikely place - amid the boxy buildings and relatively austere surroundings of one of Lynchburg’s major industrial parks.
“The concept is to create a park, but the focus is environmental education,” said Kay Frazier, Lynchburg’s director of parks and recreation.
The land is in the Lynchpin Industrial Center, off Lakeside Drive in western Lynchburg. The city’s Industrial Development Authority owns the land but will donate it to the city.
The land would be difficult to develop for a manufacturer because little of the terrain is flat, Frazier said. Building there would require filling in the lake.
Fully developing the park could take a decade or more. The earliest improvements, however, could be done within two years.
First on the city’s to-do list are the basics: building a road to the park, building a parking lot, creating trails around the park, fixing up the cabin and repairing a dam on the lake’s northern side.
A fishing pier accessible to people with disabilities, a boat dock and even a canoe rental shop are planned as well. The park would be the first in the city to offer public fishing - likely catch and release - and canoeing, Frazier said.
Farther down the road, officials would like to focus on the park’s educational benefits with additions such as the arboretum.
“We want to highlight trees and shrubs and perennials that are native to our state,” Frazier said.
The park’s trails could one day run up Ivy Creek and connect to Peaks View Park a short distance north.
Lynchburg has more than a dozen parks totaling 850 acres. They range in size from the quarter-acre Westover Neighborhood Park near Lynchburg College to the 300-acre Blackwater Creek Natural Area.
City officials are searching for the money to pay for the new park’s planned features.
The city has about $700,000 available right now, and City Council will consider putting another $200,000 toward the project during its upcoming budget session.
Officials are looking into corporate sponsorship. For example, the right level of generosity could give a company naming rights to the cabin, Frazier said.
Virginia Department of Transportation grants might also help, she said.
- By LU Armchair coach