Meadow Creek Park Grant Ideas Shared At Meeting

Monterey Parks and Recreation held a public meeting Saturday over plans to improve accessibility and recreational opportunities for Meadow Creek Park.

The Appalachian Regional Commission awarded the grant to Monterey last year. Kwill Consultants and Mayor Bill Wiggins use public meetings to gauge interest in how to best improve parks around the city.

The grant help build a boat ramp for those entering the park through the town lake and improves parking lots for handicapped visitors. It also moves access to the park’s entrance on Clarkrange Highway, shortening the current road into the park.

“What we found was that a lot of people are coming out to the site on one of these horrible roads and not coming back because it’s just so hard to get out there and enjoy it because there’s no infrastructure,” Kwill Consultants’ Dawn Kupferer said.

Easier road access means local schools have better reason to use the park, Kupferer said.

Cultural administrator Julie Bohannon hosts educational classes and workshops at the Monterey Depot Museum. She said she hopes kayaking, fishing and hunter safety classes are implemented for educational purposes if the grant is approved.

Monterey citizen Milan Perich praised the ability of Parks and Recreation to occupy children with meaningful activities.

“If you’re going to have a parks system, it’s always good to have a park system that incorporates young people, gets them off the streets, away from other activities that they don’t need to be involved in,” Perich said.

Last month’s meeting included support for a rock climbing section of the park from Tennessee Tech rock climbers and mountain bikers. Parks and Recreation plans to use grant money to build a trail leading to rock crags across the lake from the new entrance.

“By coming to the other meetings we held, they were able to give us an idea of where we needed to move forward and what was our priority,” Kupferer said.

Kupferer said she expects the grant to be approved in October. Construction would be finished next summer. A vote to match the grant is scheduled to take place at a Monterey City Council meeting next month.