By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Significant changes could be coming soon to a significant area of downtown St. Joseph.
St. Joseph City councilmembers have approved a design contract to review Coleman Hawkins Park at Felix Street Square.
City Manager Bryan Carter says the design contract will consider how to best reconfigure the park and what will be done with the present gazebo and stage.
“So, it’s going to be a pretty significant project for downtown,” Carter says. “It will potentially revise how that park is used for most of the major outdoor events that happen downtown.”
Carter says Coleman Hawkings Park is a good park, the city simply hopes to make it better.
Carter says the changes will be funded through money from the 2021 parks tax approved by voters.
“An important piece of this is as the summer season comes to an end here in a few weeks, we’ll be working with a design firm to do some public outreach, public events to determine what the community wants to see out of that park, because of the importance of that park to the downtown area.”
A design contract has been issued by the city council to consider whether the park can be reconfigured for better use as well as whether the stage and gazebo should be moved.
“One of the things that will be talked about is the possibly moving the location of that, but doing it in a way that also doesn’t create a wall to an active intersection,” Carter says.
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