City of Waldport wins $750,000 state grant to begin developing 12-acre Southworth Park in the middle of town

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

WALDPORT – The city of Waldport has been awarded $750,000 from Oregon State Parks and Recreation to launch the first phase of development of the 12-acre Louis Southworth Park at the intersection of Crestline Drive and Highway 34.

The grant will allow the city to move forward with building a playground, sports court and fields, restrooms, walking paths, and picnic shelter on the former site of Waldport Middle/High School.

The project also includes a bronze statue of the park’s namesake – Louis Southworth, a former enslaved man who homesteaded just upriver in the late 1800s and donated land for the area’s first school. The statue was commissioned through a $50,000 grant from Travel Oregon, the state’s tourism promotion agency.

While the city has received $5.3 million in state grants the past two years for sidewalk, water and sewer projects, city officials say the parks grant will be the most visible to the public.

“This is a big deal,” said city manager Dann Cutter. “This is the most noticeable thing I’ve done as city manager in three years and the council has done in 20 years.”

The state parks commission approved allocating $25.2 million to 24 proposals from cities, counties and parks district during its meeting Wednesday. Waldport’s project ranked sixth of the 47 applications.

Lincoln City received $750,000 for a new community multi-use park; the city of Newport did not get its request for $390,000 to help make improvements to Agate Beach Park.

The park funds come from lottery proceeds sent to the agency, which must use 12 percent of them for community grants.

Restricted uses for land

The land opened up in 2013 when the Lincoln County School District, with $3 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, moved the middle and high schools out of the tsunami zone. As part of the FEMA agreement, the only allowable use of the site is for a park or open space — no asphalt and no buildings with walls, other than restrooms.

The school district gave the land to the city – and for almost a decade the city held meetings, gathered ideas, comments and devised plans. But planning stopped when some development ideas proved unfeasible and the city ran out of money.

This spring the city put aside nearly $200,000 in its budget from federal stimulus funds and applied for the state parks money, part of Cutter’s push to get state and federal help for costly infrastructure projects.

The park project does not involve the former Seashore Family Literacy property, which sits on an adjacent but separate piece of property to the west. That property reverted back to the school district this spring and is up for sale.

Cutter estimates the cost of the initial phase of the park development will be nearly $950,000 – but hopes to interest local contractors in doing some of the work for their cost of labor and materials. He hopes contractors will seize on the idea of helping a project “where their kids are going to play for the next 20 years.”

First, the city must pay an engineering company to design the space using the ideas presented to the state and provide estimates of their cost. Cutter hopes some projects – the picnic shelter and playground, for example – can be tackled without affecting work on other portions of the property.

The timber competition climbing poles erected for Beachcomber Days in June won’t be affected by the park’s development, Cutter said.

Cutter hopes the various pieces of the park can be completed by the summer of 2024.

“This should be incredibly popular and highly used,” Cutter said. “People are going to notice the park.”

Councilor Jayme Morris pushed hard in city goal setting and budget meetings to tackle the project.

“I went to high school in Waldport, and seeing the old high school lot sit empty for so many years has been really hard,” said Morris. “Development of a park was one of my primary goals when elected, and I am so excited that we received funding this round after state parks suspended the local government grants during the COVID shutdown.”

Southworth statue almost done

The city was searching for a name and elements for the park last year when the local Travel Oregon representative suggested naming it after Southworth.

In turn, Jesse Dolin of Waldport, the central coast staffer for the Oregon Coast Visitors Association, said he would use money in his tourism budget to commission a statue of the Black homesteader for a signature entrance to the park.

The City Council agreed in May 2021 to name the site Louis Southworth Park and in August, the visitors association contracted with a bronze artist in Eugene to create the statue.

The statue of Southworth is nearly done. Rather than wait for possibly two years for the park to be finished, Dolin worked with the Waldport Chamber of Commerce to place it temporarily at the Alsea Bay Bridge Interpretative Center, possibly as soon as October.

Dolin said the statue is a life-sized bronze and depicts Southworth sitting on a bench playing his fiddle, which he used to perform at dances wherever he lived. When it is finally moved to the park, there will be a more permanent bench and room for people to sit next to the statue to take photos, Dolin said.

“This is very cool how this is all coming together,” Dolin said. “As a Waldport kid, I’m really proud of what the city has done. It makes my heart sing.”

To read a previous YachatsNews feature story about Louis Southworth, go here