Sean C. Morgan
The City of Sweet Home has received $242,000 in grant funds from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department to help pay for the Lower Sankey Park Phase II project.
City officials held a groundbreaking ceremony at the Harvest Festival on Oct. 5 on a project that will replace aging playground structures with new accessible equipment and add approximately 1,280 feet of paved and natural trails, path lighting, a hard-surfaced plaza at Weddle Bridge, tables, benches, bike racks and signage.
Each year OPRD gives more than $4 million to Oregon communities for outdoor recreation projects with this year’s total being more than $5.7 million. Since the program’s establishment in 1999, nearly $50 million in voter-approved lottery-funded grants have been awarded across the state.
“Of the 17 projects that were listed, we were ranked No. 2 overall,” said Communications Specialist Lagea Mull. “We were the only one in Linn County. That’s exciting.”
Associate Planner Angela Clegg wrote the grant request and led a donation campaign to raise matching funds for the project.
“Angela’s work, she was the relentless grant writer, working on the match and doing all the calculations,” Mull said.
The total project budget is $405,000. In addition the grant, the city set aside $53,000 with $35,000 in donations from the community. The city has an additional $76,000 in pledges from private donors, city staff time and Public Works equipment and time. A private donor also provided money for memorial benches.
As part of the project, the existing playground on the east side of the park will be removed, Clegg said. New equipment will be added to the newer playground area nearer to Weddle Bridge.
The city also received a $101,000 GameTime Playground Grant from GameTime, a playground equipment manufacturer, Clegg said, nearly doubling the amount of playground equipment the city can install.
The project budget included $130,000 for playground equipment.
The equipment will be in Sweet Home by Dec. 31, Clegg said. The timeline for installation depends on weather and the workload at Public Works.
“The one thing that is cool about Public Works and Kevin Makinson, who is crew lead, (is) he’s excited about this project,” Mull said. “He will definitely take this project and run with it.”
Phase II will complete the work on the paths started last year, Clegg said. They’ll be hard-surfaced and handicap-accessible.
The plaza at Weddle Bridge will also be hard-surfaced, she said, but city staff have not selected the material yet. The plaza area will cover the old gravel parking lot in front of Weddle Bridge.
“That’s already our showcase piece of the park,” Mull said. “It will just emphasize it.”
Throughout the project, the city wants the community to continue using the park, she said. At times, the city will let the public know to stay out of certain parts of the park while it is working.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Clegg, who has been working in Sankey Park about as long as she’s lived and worked in Sweet Home.
When she was education coordinator with the South Santiam Watershed Council, she and her group of high school students were the first to adopt a Sweet Home park.
“I’m pretty happy about it,” Clegg said. “I moved here 10 years ago, and the first thing I was told was don’t send my kid to Sankey Park.”
It had a bad reputation, she said. She didn’t like that, so she got involved, joining the Parks Board and making it a priority at work.
“Personally, I wanted to get it done,” Clegg said. “I wanted it to be our Central Park in Sweet Home. I wanted it to be, when someone moves to Sweet Home, go see Sankey Park – It’s beautiful. Now I’m seeing that come to fruition.”
Mull is excited to see it progress in the coming year, she said, as the families that hold reunions there return to see the upgrades.
Clegg is continuing to work on grants for the next phase, which will include improvements to Upper Sankey Park and construction of a bridge across Ames Creek from the park to the Jim Riggs Community Center.
Mull said the City of Sweet Home is grateful for the community support to revitalize Sankey Park, especially the dedication and time of its Park and Tree Committee.
The following members, Mull said have given countless hours to the city: Park and Tree Committee Chairman Lance (Wally) Shreves, Bob Dalton, Debra Northern, Nancy Patton, Alice Smith, Lena Tucker and recently James Curtis.
“Shreves even enlisted his talented wife, Adrianne Shreves, to create (three-dimensional) visualizations for the grant presentation,” Mull said. “Adrianne captured our vision using the (two-dimensional) project designs drafted by Staff Engineer Joseph Graybill then wonderfully communicated those ideas through stunning graphics. Mrs. Shreves’s in-kind donation of her work was a critical piece in our grant presentation.”
Mull added that the city is also grateful to the community members and businesses that have supported the project through cash and in-kind donations and the continued support of the residents.
The Sweet Home Public Works Department has been crucial in the city’s ability to execute a project of this magnitude, Mull said, from the leadership of Director Greg Springman and Operations Manager Dominic Valloni to the specialized insight of Engineering Technician Patricia Rice and the boots-on-the-ground tenacity and attention to detail of Makinson.