Walsh Park in Springfield’s Liberty Heights section is basically an empty field ringed by trees.
But by the summer 2021, the 12-acre park tucked back in a residential neighborhood near Interstate 291 will have two inclusive playgrounds — one for ages 2 to 5 and another for ages 5 to 12 — a baseball/softball field, all-access walking path, splash pad, picnic area new entrances off both Van Buren Avenue and Freeman Street and a pollinator meadow.
"That's to address the decline in bee and butterfly populations and to build the city's climate resiliency," said Laura Walsh, projects manager for the Springfield Department of Parks, Buildings & Recreational Management.
The park will also have a bio swale — an area with plants used to improve drainage.
Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and the office of U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., hosted a news conference in the snowy park Thursday to announce funding for the project. Neal was represented by aide Kareem Kibodya.
"These parks, open green spaces, are important to people," Sarno said. "When I was a kid, and I've said it many times, the parks were my Riviera."
Funding for the project comes from a $550,000 grant from a Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) program, $250,000 from a Community Development Block Grant, and $300,000 from the city.
An artist's rendition of what Springfield's Walsh Park will look like following $1.1 million in improvements announced Thursday and expected to be completed in in 2021.
The LWCF grant is funded by the National Park Service and is administered at the state level by the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA).
“This is great news for the City of Springfield,” Neal said in a prepared statement. “Mayor Sarno, the Parks, Buildings and Recreation Management Department, and the Parks Commission have been diligent in their efforts to preserve our green space across the city. I have been a longtime champion of Community Development Block Grants and the Land and Water Conservation Fund because they are the ones who make these projects possible. I look forward to another great park renovation in the city.”
Peter Krupszak, assistant director of the city parks department, said the project will soon go out to bid for construction with construction to being shortly after July 1, 2020. Construction would be completed a year later in July 2021.
The park once was more developed with a baseball field, Krupczak said, recalling having played there as a child.
But it fell into disrepair and had large sinkholes up until about a dozen years ago, said Ward 2 Councilor Michael Fenton.
Today, the park only has one small entrance on Freeman Street and no signs. Some folks in the neighborhood call it Freeman Park.
Existing woodlands will remain. The pollinator gardens and bio swale will get educational signage explain their purpose.
The city has made or announced $30 million in park improvements in the last few years, Sarno said. That includes $800,000 announced for Kenefick Park located in Springfield’s Brightwood neighborhood announced in October and renovations at Ruth Elizabeth Park, located between Hancock and Walnut Streets.
The “Walsh” in Walsh Park was Harold J. “Hooper” Walsh, who died in 1990 at the age of 78. Walsh was a former president of the Springfield City Council served on the City Council from 1948 to 1960 as common councilman from Ward 2.
In 1976, Freeman Park was re-named Walsh Park in his honor.