By: Taylor Christensen | Royal Oak Review | Published October 21, 2025
ROYAL OAK — Lockman Park in Royal Oak has received some big upgrades, and to celebrate, the city of Royal Oak held a ribbon cutting ceremony Oct. 9.
One of the improvements to the park, which is located near the intersection of 12 Mile and Cambell roads, is a fitness course using a combination of predesigned challenges to encourage teens and adults to get and stay fit, according to Royal Oak’s website, romi.gov.
The new improvements along with the fitness course include brand-new tennis and basketball courts, the installation of walking paths, new benches and picnic tables, and an upgraded swing set.
The cost of the upgrades totaled around $1 million, according to City Commissioner Brandon Kolo.
The ribbon cutting included an opportunity to watch school-age athletes show off their skills on the athletic course, and participants got to create their own headbands. Cider and doughnuts were also provided.
Lockman Park is one of Royal Oak’s older parks, known for its large established trees, and was dedicated in June 1939.
The park is named after Edmund Lockman, an early Royal Oak pioneer whose property once included the land where Lockman Park and the former Lockman Elementary now stand, according to community engagement specialist, Judy Davids.
“The ribbon cutting was full of energy. The Royal Oak Athletic Boosters brought a dozen powerhouse student athletes to tackle the fitness course,” Davids said via email. “Not to be outdone, the Keller Elementary crowd, the school is just a hop, skip, and jump away from the park showed up in full force. Younger students designed awesome warrior headbands and showed off their Ninja moves on the course, too. From start to finish, it was pure Royal Oak energy.”
Lockman was an Irish immigrant; he and his wife, Catherine, settled near 12 Mile and Campbell roads around 1827. Edmund and members of his family are buried at St. Mary Cemetery, and many of his descendants still call Royal Oak home, according to romi.gov.
“The renovation was such an impressive upgrade of what was a blank open field. It is now a place for people to gather, play and enjoy the day,” said Sue Stempky, a Lockman family member. “With these enhancements, I felt pride that my ancestors had generously shared their assets with the community.”
Kolo said that the improvements to Lockman Park began in 2024, and the finishing touches were made this year due to a resident’s request to upgrade the swing set during a public comment at a meeting.
“She came to us in the spring of 2025, this mom, this resident, came to talk to her government, she came to talk to us and we were able to make some real-time adjustments,” Kolo said. “We saw that the old equipment had been damaged, and at the time, had not been set for replacement, and we were able to add this into the park.”
Kolo said one of the big improvements to the park, the walking paths, are something that the city hopes to continue to add to all parks in Royal Oak.
“We added walking trails around the entire park that weave in and out of different portions of the park, which have been hugely popular and requested. We saw when we did our parks master plan that people wanted spaces to walk, and we have been adding these walking paths to all of our parks since then,” he said. “They have been well received by the public, so it’s a feature we will continue to see in future park improvements.”
Drainage upgrades have also been made to the park, according to Kolo, so that the park does not get swampy.
“Every park we are upgrading, we are also adding drainage too, so that when it rains, we are not having this water pool in the fields and kind of really closing the parks down,” Kolo said.
For more information on Lockman Park, visit romi.gov.