Look past the patches of brown grass and the peeling paint and imagine a beautiful and fun Kennedy Park.
The city wants help compiling a wish list for the park, at 3700 S. Mission Road, and plans to reveal a draft master plan at a meeting Wednesday. Officials want park users to check out the plan and give opinions before it’s finalized.
Although the city is complying with a federal mandate to complete the updated master plan, there is no money to work on any of the projects. But city parks director Fred Gray said having the plan in place is important for prioritizing projects if some grant money or impact-fee money should become available.
In November, voters rejected a bond package that would have funded $2.5 million in Kennedy Park projects, including new, more efficient irrigation systems and lighting.
Most of the facilities in the 172-acre park were built 25 to 45 years ago.
“What has happened in the last 20 years is … not much,” parks consultant Don McGann told the Tucson Parks and Recreation Commission on Wednesday.
Gray said it would cost an estimated $3.75 million to meet basic needs for repairs put off since the recession, such as repairing field lights, ramadas, rest-rooms and irrigation.
The city hired McGann to evaluate the park’s existing features and talk to park users about what they’d like to see.
The master planning process uncovered “a pressing need for rehabilitation, renovation, and replacement work,” according to city documents.
About three in four people surveyed think the park conditions are fair to poor, McGann said.
Some of the ideas presented in the draft master plan are:
- Renovate the Little League baseball and softball fields, and perhaps add batting cages and a T-ball field.
- Replace playgrounds.
- Add more walking paths, including a loop path around the lake with some exhibits about birds.
- Replace the wading pool with a splash park and renovate the swimming pool and pool deck.
- Add a floating fishing dock to the lake.
- Improve existing bathrooms and add new ones.
- Convert one or both tennis courts to pickleball courts.
- Add sand volleyball courts.
- Build an additional soccer field.
- Create a mountain-biking staging area and construct a loop trail going through the adjacent Tucson Mountain Park.
- Add a dog park.
- Improve accessibility for people with disabilities in a variety of park features.
- Improve the parking lots in many locations around the park.
Parks commissioners were especially pleased to see a variety of walking and biking trail ideas in the plan.
Commissioner Kendall Kroesen encouraged the city to keep and enhance natural desert areas because “people are clamoring for walking trails and greenways.”
Commissioner Andrea Altamirano said surveys show a high demand for walkways, and that it’s good to see the city is listening to the public and including those amenities in the plan.
The Kennedy Park Master Plan is scheduled for a vote by the City Council in June.
