Archives > Rowlett Lakeshore Times > News
Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
RSS
Share
City unveils plans for Scenic Park
By Kenny Green, kgreen@starlocalnews.com
The city has been planning its development of Scenic Park to become a cornerstone of its parks system. The park will serve as one of the gateways into the city. The city held a series of design days to allow the community to weigh-in on what amenities they wanted to see at the park.
“This has been a city effort; a combined effort,” said Jermel Stevenson, parks and recreation director.
The park, which is located on Lakeview Parkview near the two-mile bridge, will be part of the Healthy Living area, as designated by Realize Rowlett 2020, the city’s new comprehensive plan.
Jones said the location of the park will allow it to be a transition into future residential development in the area. The park would serve as a buffer between the high intensity uses and the lower intensity uses.
“It really becomes a peaceful sanctuary for those hospital workers that can access the park during the day,” Jones said.
The location and desire of the city to utilize the park as a gateway led the design team to brand the park as the Wellness Preserve at Scenic Point Park. The group also created the tagline, “Rowlett’s Path to Discovery,” to be used to market the park.
“The marriage between the Realize Rowlett plan and the master plan for the park are pretty harmonious,” said Chris Black, La Terra Studio CEO, the firm that designed the park.
The park was designed to have three zones to it – people to people, people to nature and nature to nature. The people to people will be public spaces that provide interaction among people. The people to nature area will introduce people to natural environment that exists around them. The nature to nature area will preserve the integrity of the park as it is now and have the least amount of disturbance to the wildlife and vegetation that currently exists there.
The park design includes access to both vehicular and pedestrian traffic
“As you come across the two-mile bridge we wanted to create this gateway icon that draws you into the site,” Black said. “We wanted to immerse the user into nature as quickly as possible.”
There is a loop drive that will be shared access to the park and any future development that may occur adjacent to the park. To aid with pedestrian traffic, when you come across the bridge there is a ramp that will wind down into the park. Once inside the park the pedestrian traffic will travel down a nature trail into the people to people area of the park.
“This is sort of the initial vision of what scenic point park is,” Black said.
Part of the park will include an environmental learning center and a historic pier to allow for fishing. From there the pedestrian traffic will transition into the people to nature part of the park which features a nature playground.
“What we mean by nature playground is it will have some of the elements you would think in a playground, being a slide, swing and those types of things but we really want to tie them into the natural environment,” Black said.
The park also will include several scenic lookouts into the vegetation and water elements in the parks terrain. One of the lookouts is the scenic overlook which will provide a nice view of all of the elements of the park.
The city plans to develop the park in phases as funds become available. The first phase, which would include the entry ramp into the park from the two-mile bridge, a portion of the nature trail and a portion of the pier, would cost $700,000. The first phase is the most crucial since it provides the access needed to get people into the park.
Stevenson said that after meeting with Keep Rowlett Beautiful their feedback was positive regarding the city’s plans for the park.
“I believe they sang the word awesome. I wish I would have had it taped,” said Lynda Humble, city manager.
The following are comments from the readers.
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
You must register with a valid email to post comments.
Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here:
Become a Registered User
- Return to: News «
- Home «
- Top of Page ^
