MORGANTOWN – “We’ve kind of got a little bit of everything,” Greenmont Neighborhood Association Co-chair Hilary Woodrum said of Morgantown’s original neighborhood.
It’s a difficult point to refute.
Greenmont is a nationally registered historic district, home to notable sites like Kern’s Fort, Morgantown’s first permanent settlement and oldest surviving building, among others.
Equally, it’s an eclectic, energetic, arts-friendly neighborhood that champions the diversity of its inhabitants and cherishes the fact that it has true neighborhood businesses, a rarity in Morgantown.
You could say Greenmont has it all.
You’d be wrong.
Greenmont has no greenspace. It has no parks. It has no gathering place.
“We have our spring and summer meetings on the Arch Street islands. We bring our chairs and we sit on the grass in the middle of the islands,” Neighborhood Association Co-chair Stephanie Hunt said. “That’s the only green space we have. It’s the only option.”
Beyond a patch of grass separating a divided one-way street, Gene’s Beer Garden is the designated neighborhood meeting spot.
But a new option is coming.
Earlier this week, Morgantown Director of Engineering and Public Works Damien Davis presented BOPARC with the latest conceptual rendering of a future Greenmont park – though “greenspace” is likely the preferred terminology.
It won’t have the large, permanent fixtures – playgrounds and pavilions – common to parks.
It can’t. It will be located in a flood zone on the bank of Deckers Creek below Pennsylvania Avenue, starting at the split of Brockway and Pennsylvania avenues and running just beyond the split of Pennsylvania and Deckers Creek avenues.
The vision largely draws on the property’s natural creekside setting, enhanced with a compacted stone path, picnic tables, art installations, a small performance space, and multiple waterside approaches for fishing and lounging.
At one end, a pedestrian bridge will span the creek, connecting Greenmont to the Deckers Creek Rail Trail at the future site of a bike skills track.
It’s all part of a targeted effort by the city of Morgantown, working with the neighborhood and, specifically, the Morgantown Land Reuse & Preservation Agency, to acquire and clear property along Pennsylvania Avenue that had become both an eyesore and a magnet for unwanted activity.
The city has initiated the process of acquiring the two remaining dilapidated structures on the future park site through eminent domain.
Standing on the property today, it’s kind of a mess. It’s also larger than you imagine – approximately two acres of flat land, likely a little more once it’s cleared of brush.
But it’s not hard to see the vision – nature does a lot of the work in that regard.
“It’s about having an open, malleable type of space, like a more European-style park. It’s not really going to have a lot of doodads and flashy things or set playground equipment. We want to embrace the natural elements that can be played on, like boulders for climbing,” Woodrum said. “I live up the street, on Pennsylvania. Today, the kids play in our street as soon as it’s warm enough to be outside. They pass football. They ride bikes and do all those things. So just having an open greenspace, which is basically what this is going to be, will be fantastic for the kids who live here already … Whenever school’s not in session, there are a gang of boys who are going to be down here playing football, soccer, you name it. So, it’s going to fill a need immediately.”
Initial funding for the park and adjacent pedestrian bridge is coming through the city’s Community Development Block Grant allocations.
In January, the city reallocated $301,248 in CDBG funds for the placement of the pedestrian bridge at the site of a former vehicular crossing, next to Kona Ice near the convergence of Brockway and Pennsylvania avenues.
The structure itself – a 100-foot, pre-engineered fiber reinforced polymer bridge – was donated by WVU. The city will open bids next week for its placement, which will include relocating the bridge from the university’s agronomy farm, constructing new abutments with ADA accessible ramps, reassembling the span and rerouting a short section of rail trail to align with the bridge entrance.
City Manager Jamie Miller previously said the city had $272,000 in CDBG funds on hand dedicated to the park project.
“We’re just super excited,” Hunt said. “I think this is an easy win for the city. This project, compared to building most parks, isn’t difficult. I don’t think it’s something where the budget is too out of hand.”
While separate from the Greenmont greenspace project, construction on the $653,775 bike/skate skills park to be located a stone’s throw from the park site on the other side of Deckers Creek is expected to begin as early as next week.
