Mayors Corner: Enjoy Your Parks

As the weather begins to warm up in Northeast Ohio, we are all excited to get outside and enjoy some springtime sun and fresh air. Here in Lakewood, we are fortunate to benefit from an abundance of city parks spread across our city that encourage our residents to stay active. At City Hall, we understand that we have a duty to maintain and improve these important public assets to ensure that they continue to provide value over generations. This year, there are a number ofprojects ongoing and planned in our city parks. 

Many of you will be aware of repairs and upgrades at our larger parks and recreation assets in recent years – for example, the complete rebuilding of Foster Pool or the major investment and management changes at Winterhurst. But we also continue to place an emphasis on investing in our neighborhood parks, which are important in providing access to recreation within walking distance of our residents throughout Lakewood. This year’s focus on neighborhood parks can be found at Merl Bunts Park and Niagara Park. 

At both parks, brand new playground equipment, swing sets, and picnic tables will be installed soon. Demolition of the previous equipment is complete at both parks, and our public works staff currently is working with the contractor on final grading and excavation. New pads will be poured for the picnic tables, which will also connect them to the public sidewalks. Merle Bunts will also feature a new 10' X 15' picnic shelter, made possible by an award of $50,000 from Cuyahoga County's CDSG program. We hope to have construction done soon on these neighborhood parks to ensure they are usable as the weather warms up and more people are out and about. 

In addition to our neighborhood parks, we are also working on investments over at Madison Park. Once again with the support of Cuyahoga County dollars, our Lakewood Planning and Development Department recently completed a visionary new master plan for Madison Park that will guide usage and capital investment for our second largest city park for years to come. Investments scheduled to happen this year include the creation of a connector path through a city lot on Halstead that will add more direct pedestrian and bicycle access to the park from the Birdtown neighborhood. We will also install a new loop path through the park to encourage active walking, running, and multi-modal exercise. 

Our city continues to be a wonderful place to stay active, enjoy nature, and connect with neighbors in our many parks. I hope to see you all out and about as we welcome spring to Lakewood.