Mountain neighbours become park planners to reinvent schoolgrounds

When a school closes, neighbours get nervous.

But a neighbourhood on the Mountain didn't wallow when Vincent Massey school closed in 2011. They banded together to figure out a design for a park on the school grounds, and it broke ground last week.

More than a run-of-the-mill one-night park community feedback forum, a committee of neighbours took up the mantle of park planners – learning about best practices in playgrounds and balancing competing interests (should it be a dog park or facilitate seniors' fitness?).

They even went on field trips to other city parks to find examples in the wild of the things they wanted to include.

"It was one of the most enjoyable community consultations that we've ever done," said Chris Herstek, director of district operations in the city's recreation division.

He said there was much mulling about what the park should be, with questions like:

"Who is going to be our actual users of the park?" he said.

'The residents did their homework'

The committee considered advice from public health professionals about making the park fitness-friendly. They heard from police about effective lighting. A landscape architect spoke about efficient spacing between parts of the park. The residents even picked which trees to plant.

"A lot of the residents did their homework," Herstek said.

The new park is at the Vincent Massey school grounds in the Macassa neighbourhood on the Mountain, the corner of East 37th Street and 7th Avenue. 

Open by Labour Day

Kendra Brown, who chaired the residents' committee, said the neighbourhood has a mix of household types.

"It's an older, established neighbourhood, most of the houses are around 60 years old," she said. "You have the younger families and then people who've lived there 40, 50 years, the empty nesters."

Coun. Tom Jackson, who represents the neighbourhood on Hamilton city council, convinced his colleagues on council to pay $1 million to buy the two-acre site from the school board in 2011. The city is kicking in another $544,000 to build a park there, which they hope to open by Labour Day.

"Often, when school board sites go up for sale, there's a lot of anxiety in the community and those neighbourhoods as to the future of that site, and worries about it falling into private development hands," Jackson said.

What elements made the cut

Once the city had the land, he sent around a letter to nearby residents, asking them to be part of the process.

"We started discussing the ideas for the park, and people had ideas of wanting a dog park, or a park geared toward seniors," Brown said. "We wanted something that would have areas for kids to play, as well as a sun shelter so that people could be there watching their kids or grandkids. Also, people still wanted to have it geared toward exercising."  

Brown's own kids are 7, 5 and 3. The committee came up with a plan with two playgrounds – one for kids older than 7 with bigger equipment and swings, and one for younger ones.

There will also be four fitness stations, a water bottle fill-up and water fountain, benches, a "sun shelter," a multi-purpose court and a plaque commemorating Vincent Massey's contributions as the first Canadian-born Governor General.

Brown studied kinesiology in university before becoming a business analyst, so she said it was a nice chance to use her training.

At the ground-breaking last week, she had a hard time believing it's all happening.

"It definitely was shorter than I expected to get to that part, knowing that we're going to have a park by the end of the summer."