Tallgrass walks through park design

After gathering the results of a community survey this fall, the new plans were unveiled for Custer’s Harbach Park in a community meeting last Thursday, hosted by the Custer firm Tallgrass Landscape Architecture. Owners Matt Fridell and Tanya Olson were on hand to walk attendees through the design.
“Tonight’s mission is really to talk through the results of the online survey we had and what we learned from that,” said Fridell.
“From this, the city can use this a basis to apply for grants. Grants are a lot of how the city park amenities can be built in a small town,” said Olson.
 The meeting revealed that “Option C” was overwhelmingly the most popular option of three possible plans presented in a survey that ran from October to November. Option C garnered about 150 more votes than the second most popular option with 196 votes. Option A got 42 votes and option B got 20 votes.
“Everybody likes C, hands down. It’s pretty clear,” said Fridell.
A Harbach Park master plan was first developed back in 2018.
“It was a different world back then—nobody knew what pickleball was,” joked Fridell, explaining how the plan has continued to develop since the first iteration to add additional recreation for popular activities, like pickleball for instance.
Some important things, according to survey respondents, were the organization of the general layout, the size and location of the skate park and quantity of pickleball and basketball courts. For survey respondents that preferred option C, one of the most appealing aspects was the inclusion of a splash pad and town square area.
“The single most important thing for everybody was the town square piece,” said Fridell, “People can see the value of that happening in this space.”
This “town square” area comes with a covered stage and shelter areas, a splash pad and plenty of open green space. Fridell explained that for concerts and events, the space could hold about 100 people and that the splash pad could be turned on or off, depending on the use of the space at any given time.
“It’s hard not to want that for your community,” said Fridell.
This preferred option  also comes with plenty of sports-centered recreation, adding to and updating the existing offerings of Harbach Park: three pickleball courts, a new tennis court, a new full basketball court, a gaga ball pit, two horseshoe pits and a new sand volleyball court.
This plan would also move the public restrooms near the skate park to be adjacent to the chamber of commerce. Many of the existing courts are also shifted to the east, where the skate park currently sits. The skate park, then, is moved to be just north of French Creek in the area southwest of the intersection of Washington and Seventh Streets, near the playground.
Next to this new skate park site is a water access/creek interaction area, where park visitors will get safer access to French Creek. About 30 additional parking stalls are also added along Seventh Street, Eighth Street and Washington Street.
The bad news with option C, said Fridell, is that is also the most expensive plan overall and that there is some extra work with much of the park being in the floodplain.
Some in the audience had concerns with the location of the skate park, with one man saying he felt that it should be near the existing location as many young people who use the park look for each other in the neighboring parking spots off of Seventh Street.
Others had questions about the possibility of adding opportunities for  more winter use, like adding an ice skating rink.  It was also noted that an ice skating rink opens up opportunities for hockey and broomball. Other rinks in the area, Olson said, are often only used for a couple months out of the year, due to sunny winters, but that using synthetic ice can lengthen the usable season. Fridell said that the rinks can also be overlaid onto courts that aren’t frequently used in the winter.  
Olson said that in Lead and Casper, Wyo., snow is cleared and dumped into their parks for winter festivals, snowball fights and other wintertime enjoyment.
One attendee brought up a question about the splash pad’s water use. Fridell said to recycle water adds about $100,000 to the splash pad project, but that in Lead, its splash pad runs for about $3,000 per summer, even without recycling water. The cost of having the splash pad starts at about $80,000, but is expected to be closer to $150,000.
At the end of the meeting attendees gave input on sticky notes as to what aspects were most important to them in the design and what they thought may be missing from the design. This input will inform decisions as to what elements of the design will be implemented first. The park will likely be completed in phases, with specific aspects being done in order of priority and as funding becomes available to complete them.
“We have the ability to start some projects, apply for grants and apply them incrementally over time,” said Olson.