Elkhart County asking public’s help in planning potential park

GOSHEN, Ind. — Elkhart County held an open house Tues. evening for the community to share ideas and input on a new site plan the county is creating for ‘Beech Grove County Park’.

The 64-acre area is currently owned by the Elkhart County Commissioners and is located along the east side of the County Road 17 corridor. Of that area, there are 40 acres of forest and 12 acres of constructed wetlands.

“We are gathering the general public here today to get their ideas and their vision for what this 65-acre parcel of land could look like in the future… It was first acquired by the Elkhart County commissioners when they created the new County Road 17 and… they have been working on getting an entrance to this area and one of the ideas that came up was the possibility of transforming this into a park for the general public,” said the Elkhart County Director of Parks, Ronda DeCaire.

DeCaire was one of the ones to throw the possibility of a new park into the ring.

“We are gathering the general public here today to get their ideas and their vision for what this 65-acre parcel of land could look like in the future… It was first acquired by the Elkhart County commissioners when they created the new County Road 17 and… they have been working on getting an entrance to this area and one of the ideas that came up was the possibility of transforming this into a park for the general public,” said the Elkhart County Director of Parks, Ronda DeCaire.

The Redevelopment Commission and Elkhart County Parks are working with DLZ, consultants brought in to help craft a master plan for the park.

Ben Baker, a landscape architect with DLZ, said they kicked this project off in late spring. The open house is just one of the first steps into the public input stage, as well as an online survey that will be open until Sept.

“We’re gonna go through the beginning of September with our public input stage and then we’ll analyze all of that information we gathered, we’ll meet back with the County Parks and the County Planning Commission, kind of talk about what we’ve heard from the public and then start our master planning aspects. So, we’ll come up with some designs and some ideas for what… that park may look like… and then hopefully have that wrapped up by end of the year, have some early spring presentations to the county board of commissioners… and hopefully have the plan finalized by… early spring next year,” said Baker.

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