By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
While the unusually wet spring has caused the water to be higher than normal at Ideal Park, the park’s redevelopment plans continue to move forward with Wyoming City officials expecting to reopen the park on schedule in June 2020.
Earlier this year, the Wyoming City Council approved a contact to Katerberg Verhage, Inc. for about $1.6 million for the project. The plan will include an accessible playground, improved parking with enhanced safety features, Buck Creek viewing stations, basketball court, shelter, and restroom. The park also will feature an improved walking and bike trail with connection to the City’s interurban trail system.
“All the development will be on the east side of the park,” said Wyoming’s Director of Community Services Rebecca Rynbrandt. This was per residents who encouraged the city to relocate primary facilities to the eastside of the creek because of flooding, Rynbrandt said.
In 2014, the City of Wyoming had a tornado which caused significant damage at Ideal Park, including the lost of many trees — some more than 100 years old — and the park’s playground equipment. It took two years for the city to clean up the park and it was reopened in 2016 only for a second tornado to hit the park area followed by a flood.
“We have been working toward the redevelopment: the return of playgrounds, the return of trees to that area of our community, particularly to that park since 2014,” Rynbrandt said.
Amazingly, what was not touched was the original lodge and art deco bridge which was constructed through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a program designed to put people to work during the Great Drepression years in the 1930s. In fact, Ideal Park is one of the oldest parks in Kent County, dating back to the 1930s. It was South Kent’s preeminent park hosting a number huge events include the local Republican Party. In the 1960s, former Governor George Romney and former President Gerald R. Ford were pictured shaking hands at one of these Republican Party events.
In 2015, after meeting with residents to discuss plans, the city council approved the Ideal Park master plan and was then able to write a grant for Michigan’s Natural Resources Trust Fund. The city received $300,000. The rest of the project will be funded through the dedicated City of Wyoming Parks and Recreation operational millage.
The entire Ideal Park project will be about $3.3 million, with the first phase of about $1.6 million being approved in April of this year, Rynbrandt said, adding “with the goal of having the park opened by June 6, 2020.”
