Quality of life
Downtown parks give residents a chance to connect with nature
By Jeff Wisser
The role of parks in American life and society, according to Frederick Law Olmsted, considered the father of American parks, is to serve as the “lungs of the city” that could foster physical and mental well-being.
Olmsted, a landscape architect best known for his work designing New York’s Central Park, as well as his work on college campuses including Stanford University and the University of Chicago, held that, even as the U.S. became more urban and industrial, parks could restore the connection of the people to nature.
That connection to nature, and to Olmsted’s belief in humankind’s need to connect with it, is being put into practice in Wilkes County.
In both Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro, major revitalization efforts for parks near downtown commercial districts have been undertaken with an eye toward jump-starting foot traffic in local town centers.
“The public,” said Ken Noland, Wilkesboro’s town manager, “deserves opportunities to recreate, and particularly to do that in nature and do it for free.
“I mean, just getting out in the outdoors, it's just an important thing that we can provide our citizens. Having it in the central part of town is even a greater value to us because it brings people into the town.”
A big part of the Wilkesboro revitalization is Cub Creek Park. “The flagship park,” as Noland calls it, involved efforts to restore the creek that gives the park its name.
“We did the restoration because we wanted to clean the creek up, but we also did it to protect our assets in the park,” Noland explained. “After every big storm, it just seemed like we’d get a ballfield washed away, or some other improvement washed away.”
Experts were brought in to reset the creek and to keep water moving efficiently even after major rain events.
“The purpose of this restoration was to ensure that when the water’s flowing, it’s flowing in a tight pattern, kind of in a smaller creek, which means the water flows at a higher velocity and pulls the sediments through, so that way they don’t lay down in the bottom of the creek.”
The results, so far, have been very encouraging.
“We’ve not lost any improvements to the park since that was done,” Noland said. “And the park, I think just a few years ago, sat under five feet of water.”
And that’s good, Noland said, for not only park enthusiasts, but also for nearby businesses.
“You come down to the park,” he explains, “and you ride your bike or you play pickleball for a couple of hours. You’re more apt to ride up the street and visit a little restaurant at lunchtime and get your lunch. So it provides commerce in the town as well.”
Noland credits local leaders with helping to drive the creek restoration and subsequent park improvements.
“The city council here realized the asset they had and started to spend a lot of effort on improving and now promoting it. And it’s made a big difference.”
And, Noland emphasizes, improvements to the park will continue. He envisions changes near the new pickleball area, for instance.
“We’ve got more improvements to do, and, of course, they will never be completely done, that’s just the nature of local government: You’re always looking for what’s next, so that’s what we’ll be doing as well.”
Revitalization efforts on North Wilkesboro’s centrally located Smoot Park, the town’s oldest park, are also ongoing following the unveiling in November 2022 of a new, inclusive playground. Also new are a challenge course, featuring climbing wall, agility pods, parallel bars and ninja steps, as well as a new splash pad area with pop-up sprays, spinning water features and a mushroom umbrella that drops water on kids playing in the near vicinity.
And as summer 2024 comes to a close, work will begin in November on a complete pool and poolhouse overhaul project.
“Smoot Park is a gateway into our downtown,” North Wilkesboro Town Manager Holly Minton said. “When you're driving in on Second Street and you look to the left, you see Smoot Park, you see a really truly beautiful, revitalized park with kids playing in the pool and playing on the playground and utilizing a really neat skate park. And it says, hopefully, to the community that we're putting their tax dollars to good use and that we're providing them with a beautiful capital asset that's also useful.”
And, Minton adds, “we also want to use the park for programming, so we're excited about being able to offer not just swim lessons, but to essentially expand our programming.”
The revitalization plans reflect changing community attitudes toward facilities such as pools and parks, and the things that North Wilkesboro residents want to see in their hometown.
“They say folks are moving more towards what I call a ‘fun pool,’ with big slides and buckets and cannon guns and all of those things,” Minton said. “Rather than a traditional community pool where you have lap swim and swim teams and things of that nature. When you or I think of a community pool, we don't necessarily think of a water park environment, but the water park environment is evidently what really gets people excited these days.”
And good parks, Minton stresses, are part of good communities.
“People understand that parks are good,” she explained. “I mean if you ask a school of government what makes good communities, I think normally their response would be good parks and good schools.”
And that, she added, drives decision-making.
“We try to base the decisions we make with taxpayer dollars on putting those dollars to the best possible use,” Minton said. “And some of that is understanding the research, some of that is understanding that good parks and good schools attract growth, that community development goes hand in hand with having good facilities and good activities.”
