UPDATE:
The Village of Bellevue is moving ahead with building a recreational grass field at a small local park. The Village's Parks Commission decided to prioritize the field over a new pavilion at its meeting Monday night. After the field is built, the village hopes to secure more funding to build the pavilion, lights, a bathroom structure, and crushed gravel trails. One commission member said at Monday's meeting: "Build it — they will come."
ORIGINAL STORY:
Bellevue is revamping a priority list for Bethel Park, which has been slated for major additions since 2017.
- The village aims to create more amenities at the small park off Seville Drive, including possibly breaking ground on an all-purpose grass field in 2025, to cater to the high-density apartment population lacking local park space.
- Financial constraints have reduced the budget from $200,000 to $70,000-$75,000, affecting the scope of immediate projects.
- Parks and Rec director Kyle Casper anticipates the Village Parks Commission will prioritize the potential athletic field and a pavilion above other park upgrades.
- The Parks Commission met at 6 p.m. Monday to establish a priority list for the park's future — the meeting can be watched on the Village's Facebook page
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story, with additional details added for the web)
This pocket park is set to become much more than that — but plans are sliding back, as Bellevue says it doesn't have the money for what it originally planned.
A project, nearly a decade in the making. For the past eight years, Bellevue's had big ideas for what will lie beyond this playground.
"[The] pavilion, we're looking at being somewhere here between the playground and the all-purpose field," Kyle Casper said.
Casper, Bellevue's director of parks, recreation, and forestry, says a grass recreational field is on the way.
"Soccer can be an option out here," he said, "[and] depending on different seasons if a group wanted to use it for lacrosse, or flag football, [it could]."
But other upgrades — like gravel trails, an orchard, and more parking — are on hold because the Village says it only has about $75,000 dollars to work with, instead of the $200,000 it was hoping for.
"Some projects this year — like the pickleball court we constructed at DeBroux [Park], as well as an overlay project on the East River Trail — some of those, unfortunately, costs ended up coming in [high]," Casper said. "Additional work needed to be done that was not projected originally."
Casper says the village is still deciding which part of the park's additions will come first — the pavilion or the soccer field.
"We feel we can get at least the athletic field done, or the pavilion done, for sure, with the funding we currently have," he said.
The planner putting together the master plan draft map, Eric Fowle of Cedar Corporation, says the grass field itself will cost between $60,000 and $80,000, while the pavilion will cost between $50,000 and $60,000.
Fowle said most users of the park will live within walking distance from it, telling NBC 26: "It is an area with fairly dense population, given all the apartment buildings in that area [...] [a] neighborhood park typically is going to serve people within a quarter- to a half a mile of the park."
Casper hopes the Village can fulfill its complete vision for the park over the next 10 years, and make Bethel Park a greater community asset.
"This is been in the works for almost eight years now," he said. "So it's something we're excited about, getting development out to this park, and getting a park people in this neighborhood can be proud of."
The Bellevue Parks Commission will finalize a Master Plan for Bethel Park at future meetings.
