Park planning

A process is underway toward making improvements at Pennville Park.

Pennville Park Board is in the midst of working on its five-year park master plan as well as handling some logistical details and fundraising with a goal of getting some projects started at the park.

“The park is the heart of Pennville now,” said Tanner McClain, who joined the park board early this year. “That’s where all the events are.

“That’s the place where families can go and picnic or play. … 

“That’s what we have. So it just needs to be updated.”

Nearly all of the park board is new as of this year, with Talir Ellis, John Gibson and Sharon Ross joining McClain and her mom Deb Hidy, who started on the board in November. Upon taking the new roles, the board members started talking about what to do next and looked into possible grants for new playground equipment.

In order to apply for any such state funding, they learned they would need to have a five-year park master plan on file with Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). One was not in place.

Working on the plan has been one of the board’s focuses since then, with assistance from John Moore of Jay County Trails Club and those who worked on the plan for the Town of Bryant. As part of that process, they surveyed Pennville Park users.

The results showed that the activities most regularly participated in at the park are using the playground (mentioned by 70.2% of respondents), attending public events such as Arts in the Park, Church in the Park and the Pennville Pumpkin Festival (65.9%) and the Pennville soccer program (47.1%). Only a handful said they use the horseshoe pits, with less than 20% of respondents saying they are regular users of the baseball diamond and painted rock garden. (Other amenities fell somewhere in between.)

Feedback also showed more area for “open play space” and athletic fields as areas of need. When asked about a dream project (regardless of cost) in the next 10 years, respondents prioritized soccer fields and a splash pad.

Armed with that feedback, the park board hired Ryan Cambridge and Mark Beer of FRMWORK, an architecture design and planning firm based in Zionsville.

“They dig through the survey feedback we have with the questions to figure out what’s the most wanted thing?” said McClain. “What is not being used?”

The firm also utilized Pennville’s revitalization plan and early feedback from the county level as part of the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) 2.0 process.

“That way they could try to find ways to tie into everything so it’s not just limited to the park but incorporated into future things the town may potentially do,” McClain added.

The park board received a draft of the park master plan from the firm last week. It includes making adjustments to the park to utilize space for soccer fields — a goal is to provide a field large enough for 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds — install a “pump track” for bicycles, skateboards, etc., and a long-term goal of having a splash pad.

The board will have another public hearing on the plan — it has not yet been scheduled — in order to gather more feedback.

“As far as plans go, nothing is finalized yet at all,” said McClain. “It’s just brainstorming.

“We have the basics. We know what the people want. We know what’s realistic.”

The plan needs to be approved and submitted to the Indiana DNR by Nov. 10.

In conjunction with the planning, the park board has also been working on fundraising in order to supplement its limited budget. Those efforts include selling concessions during the soccer program, a planned “cow pie bingo” event during the Oct. 21 Pennville Pumpkin Festival (first prize is $1,000) and designer purse bingo on Nov. 10 at Pennville Community Gym.

McClain and Hidy noted that a spiral slide had to be removed from the playground equipment after a child suffered a cut while using it. (They said the equipment is more than 30 years old.)

It’s time for some updating, they said, with Hidy mentioning that there are a lot of apartments in Pennville that do not provide back yards for children to play in.

So a lot of them spend time at the park,” she said. “They just need a place to go to run off some of that energy and play.”