South Bend Community shares vision for future of Rum Village Park
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — South Bend Venues Parks & Arts (VPA) hosted the second Rum Village Park Community Engagement Event Thursday evening at the Technology Resource Center, inviting the community to discuss and vote on concept designs for a park master plan.
The 160 acres of woodlands located on Ewing Ave. at Gertrude St. is already a community staple, filled with assets such as a nature center, mountain bike trails, a disk golf course and much more.
The city is hoping they can add to the park, helping it become an even bigger Michiana destination. A Chicago based company, Site Design Group, helped draft proposed concepts. Some ideas include enhancing existing amenities such as the dog park, hiking and mountain bike trails, the ADA path, and the disk golf course.
Other potential new experiences included ideas like a canopy walk and a more natural and environmentally based play area. Residents attending the meeting were given a presentation from Site Design Group, ask question, and vote for which ideas they like best.
“Funding for this project is still to be determined and so it’s events like these that help us… kind of put together where funding could potentially come from in the future… we always look to grant opportunities, that’s really a way that the city has been able to produce the number of projects that we have over the past 10 years, and so absolutely grant funding is always a look for the city,” said Director of Recreation for South Bend VPA, Macey Hannah.
People like Clark Richardes have been enjoying the beauty of Rum Village Park for years. Richardes spent his teenage years riding the mountain bike trails with his dad. That was 15 years ago and now he’s the vice president for the Northern Indiana Mountain Bike Association (NIMBA), who provides no cost maintenance to the biking trails at Rum Village. He hopes a master plan will give more access for the community to try out biking.
“If you think about trails as like experience for different users, one area that we’re really lacking at Rum Village is a true place for somebody to go out with their kid, or somebody who is just trying to get into the activity of mountain biking, so a proper beginner trail would really be a huge asset to the community… this is a fantastic opportunity and something that not just people involved in NIMBA should be excited about, everyone who likes spending time out in nature should realize what a fantastic opportunity this is,” said Richardes.
Others, like Indiana University South Bend (IUSB) ecology professor, Deb Marr, said she hopes whatever changes do come will still protect the largest urban park in South Bend.
“I’m a little bit concerned if the proposal is to build a lot more trails that it’s going to impact that ground level, so I am concerned about that, but I would say a lot of the ideas are really good and exciting… it would make it an even more attractive park to both people in the neighborhood, but also as an attractive place to go for the region,” said Marr.
The project got started back in September and the meeting closed out the final stages of gathering community feedback. Hannah said they hope to have final concepts and the full master plan ready to go by the end of this year’s first quarter. At that point, it will be presented to the community again for final review.
“…know that a master plan is just a vision, a guiding tool for us to move forward, but there could still be changes along the way,” said Hannah.
To learn more about Rum Village Park, click here.