City Utilities powers Parks expansion

Others are more like a walk in the park.

Such was the case May 15, when council approved a master agreement between City Utilities and the Springfield-Greene County Park Board. The agreement allows CU to lease land to the Parks department for use as new park facilities.

The agreement is set up to allow addendums dealing with individual properties to be developed.

The first such property is 140 acres on the north shore of Lake Springfield, the addendum for which was approved at the same meeting. The site will officially change hands June 1.

The facility is part of the newly formed special facilities division of the Parks department.

Marla Calico, division director, said the Phase I plans for the new facility include the construction of a visitors center called the Lake Springfield Boathouse, with retail opportunities, permanent restrooms, meeting facilities, a linear walking trail and a water trail for canoeing and kayaking.

Metropolitan community parks

It’s unclear how much the project will cost, though Calico said the department has a budget of about $1 million for the first phase. Construction should begin this summer, with the trail finished by early winter and the boathouse ready in 2007.

Future phases of the project, Calico added, could include additional walking trails, a small mountain bike trail and a nature area coordinated with the Audubon Society.

The Lake Springfield site is one of four parks currently under development; others are Rutledge-Wilson Farm, a 207-acre living demonstration farm near Sunshine and West Bypass; the 53-acre Valley Water Mill Equestrian Center near Interstate 44 and Glenstone; and Lost Hill, a 132-acre natural resource park north of Hillcrest High School with nine caves and farmland on the Greene County Register of Historic Sites.

“They’re (called) metropolitan community parks,” Calico said of the four new sites, all of which are expected to be open by the end of 2007. “It’s a unique situation that they present – both in size and in the different opportunities they present as part of the new special facilities division.”

These larger metropolitan community parks are part of the overall Vision 20/20 plan, and Jodie Adams, Springfield-Greene County director of parks and recreation, said the larger sites are crucial for the growing population.

“It really gives people a sense of getting back to nature, getting people back to wide-open ranges, so they don’t feel so cramped in their environments,” Adams said. “There’s a lot of building going on around these parks, but as the city grows and the county grows, they need these areas so they can handle the load of people within the metropolitan area.”

Adams said that these development projects are being paid for through the quarter-cent parks sales tax, which generates $9.8 million a year. Half of that renews automatically for facilities maintenance, while the rest has a built-in sunset provision; city and county voters will decide Aug. 8 whether or not to extend the sunset portion of the tax, which amounts to nearly $5 million a year.

Master plan

The department has more planned as well; Adams mentioned Fellows Lake and McDaniel Lake as CU sites that could be added to the Park Board/CU agreement.

Andy Dalton, general counsel for CU, said the idea for the agreement came from Adams and her predecessor, former parks director Dan Kinney.

“(They had) a desire to expand the park system in the south Springfield area, and of course the north side of Lake Springfield is an ideal place for additional facilities,” Dalton said. “City Utilities was glad to participate because we’re not really in the parks business.”

He added that there are currently three other access points to Lake Springfield managed by CU in cooperation with the Missouri Department of Conservation.

“In the future there may be some interest by the park board in taking control of those areas as well,” Dalton said.

“There was some thought that it would be appropriate to add those areas into their maintenance schedules.”

No timetable has been set for those possible additions to the Parks department.

Metropolitan Community Parks

Four new parks are under development, part of a Springfield-Greene County Parks Department effort to build larger facilities to meet the needs of a growing population. The department has dubbed these sites metropolitan community parks.

• Rutledge-Wilson Park, a 207-acre living demonstration farm near Sunshine and West Bypass

• Lost Hill, hiking trail and naturalist programs north of Hillcrest High School

• Lake Springfield Park, north shore project with City Utilities near Evans Road and Highway 65

• Valley Water Mill Equestrian Center, 53-acres featuring an equestrian center and trails, near Interstate 44 and Glenstone[[In-content Ad]]