BY ED MARCUM
marcum@knews.com
Bicycle tracks up and down the dirt mounds on a vacant Oklahoma Avenue lot show the place is already getting some use, even before Old North Knoxville Inc. has started work to turn it into a neighborhood park.
Amy Broyles and Beth Booker, who bring their children to play there from time to time, said the organization has the project well underway.
"We hope to have the grading and the pathways and play equipment installed by early fall and then next spring, as soon as the weather warms up, but before it gets too hot, we're going to come out and build the gazebo," Broyles said.
Broyles and Booker's husband, Jamie Parkey, are co-chairs of the committee that is pursuing the park project. Beth Booker is chairwoman of Old North Knoxville's beautification committee.
The idea is to take what was a blighted part of the neighborhood and turn it into a park for Old North Knoxville families. Broyles noted that the property is just a few blocks from the Guy B. Love apartments for seniors, so "We hope maybe some of them will come to the park and play with their grandchildren."
The space is just two vacant lots in the 400 block of Oklahoma, but the plans for them are ambitious. Tom Brechko, Old North Knoxville resident and planner with the Metropolitan Planning Commission, did the latest design.
Some of its elements include brick and crushed limestone pathways, a 21-foot-wide gazebo, a water feature, playground equipment, benches and tables, a grass lawn and more.
"It's a small little park, but we are going to have a lot of nice features in it," Broyles said.
A $30,000 grant from the Rohm and Haas Community Partnership Initiative got the process rolling. Broyles said David and Beth Booker were instrumental in getting that grant.
"Beth and her husband are two of our big neighborhood walkers and David had noticed that there were a lot of neighborhood kids playing in the street and running around. He saw these two overgrown lots and thought it would be a great idea if we had a neighborhood park there for the children to play in," Broyles said.
In 2002, David Booker started working with the city of Knoxville on the idea of the city buying the properties for a park that would be owned by the city but built and paid for by the neighborhood organization.
Just acquiring the property was difficult and took about three years, Beth Booker said. The two lots had different owners, one of whom lived out of state.
"That was a several year process because there was an absentee owner and these were both properties where there were about 10 years of back taxes owed," she said.
During this time, the neighborhood adopted the lots, clearing out brush, mowing and doing other work.
"We killed a 30-foot poison ivy off of a tree. I thought it was another tree; it was the biggest poison ivy I had ever seen," Booker said.
Broyles said the Bookers helped coordinate neighborhood volunteers to do this work, plus worked with the East Tennessee Design Center to produce a preliminary park design.
The design went through several versions before the one drawn up by Brechko, because the organization had to consider wishes of neighbors who live on either side of the park property, Broyles said.
David Booker wrote the application that resulted in the $30,000 Rohm and Haas grant, but his wife said it will probably take $60,000-$70,000 to complete the project. The neighborhood will need to do more fundraising, and already has a project in mind, Broyles said.
The organization is selling commemorative bricks that supporters can have engraved and these will be used in the design for the water feature, Broyles said.
"That will help us fund the park but will also be a really nice way to honor someone," Broyles said.
Both the design center and the city recreation department provided a lot of expertise to the neighborhood organization, Broyles said. As a result, the play structures and other features will be handicap accessible and the pathways will be made of brick and crushed limestone instead of poured concrete so neighborhood volunteers can do the work.
As the park was designed, Old North Knoxville Inc. surveyed the neighborhood to determine what features people would like. Everybody seemed to want swings, so those will be included. So will some small tables with backgammon and chess patterns made into the surfaces so people can bring their own game pieces and play.
The city will have a final say over what goes in the park and has agreed to maintain it, but otherwise, the park will be a creation of the neighborhood.
"We can do whatever we want to in here as long as they agree to it and it meets city standards and we pay for it," Booker said.
More information is on the Old North Knoxville Inc. Web site at www.oldnorthknoxville.org and the commemorative bricks are available through Amy Broyles at 865-237-6538.
Ed Marcum may be reached at 865-342-6267.