LINCOLN, Nebraska (KLKN) – On Thursday evening, the Lincoln Parks and Recreation Department submitted comments on the future master plan for Van Dorn Park.
The park is located on the southwest side of 9th Avenue and Van Dorn Street.
The event provided an opportunity for community members to have their voices heard.
JJ Yost, planning and facilities manager at Parks and Rec, said: “We want to develop these plans as much as possible for public spaces.”
Input included what you liked and disliked about the park, how to get around, and what you wanted added or removed.
Yost says the information gleaned from the listening sessions will guide the master plan.
“We’re going to take the input we got from tonight and put it into a draft plan for the park,” he said. “And we’ll report back at his second meeting in two months to share our findings and see if people are right and how they react to it.”
He said there is a lot of interest in the park and what it will become.
Adding a botanical garden is interesting, but resident Diane Walkowiak doesn’t think it’s a good use of the property.
“It’s a crowded area,” she said. “Installing it here in Van Dorn Park would mean destroying most of the trees, probably destroying bike paths and everything that people have worked so hard for.”
Walkowiak would rather have more play equipment, improve the canopy, open shelters to complement existing closed shelters, and remove material storage areas on the west side.
“We could restore it to a wooded area, or maybe that old rental building could become an open shelter,” she said. .”
Now that the listening period has ended, only time will tell what the future holds for Van Dorn Parks when the Parks Department presents draft plans in the coming months.