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City using community feedback for park plan

Nov 23, 2016 | 11:00 AM

After a community engagement process that started in September, the city of North Battleford presented two potential plans for a park development and asked for more feedback.

The city, along with Cushing Terrell Landscape Architecture and Prairie Wild Consulting, presented two concepts for the future of the Fairview Heights Park on Tuesday, Nov. 22.

Wayne Freeman of Cushing Terrell said the group will take feedback from Tuesday’s session to develop the final plan.

“The idea is to give the public a general option, so we’ll take the feedback and we’ll merge them together, listen to what people comment on tonight and take a little bit of our professional expertise and turn this into the master plan for the community,” he said.

The two concepts are based around a water feature, which is necessary for stormwater detention. One of the concepts is a more active park, while the other is passive. The active one contains more play features and activity-based amenities, while the passive one is more walking trails and decorative features. The concepts were inspired by a public meeting in September where residents shared ideas about the park.

North Battleford city planner Devin MacAulay said community engagement has been essential to the development process so far.

“It’s everyone’s city and it’s taxpayer dollars,” he said. “It is always great just to have feedback as to what people want to see. This is not just done in a closed door meeting, it’s very important to gather as much input as we can from as many people as we can.”

 

Sarah Rae is battlefordsNOW’s court and crime reporter. She can be reached at Sarah.Rae@jpbg.ca or tweet her @sarahjeanrae.