Construction of new facility at Martin Road Park planned to begin this year

FERNDALE — Construction on a project in Ferndale’s Martin Road Park will look to begin later this year.

At its April 28 meeting, the City Council approved a community project funding agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a grant that totals $704,669.

“(The grant) was kind of one of those things coming out of the pandemic where there was a lot of opportunities for funding for recreation and support of outdoor recreation facilities.” Assistant City Manager James Krizan said.

The grant funding will be used to construct a facility at Martin Road Park to support the splash pad and other activities at the park.

The facility will have modern restrooms, a concession stand and the ability to rent equipment for park activities such as pickleball and basketball.

“It’s to help support the park and activities with the splash pad,” Krizan said. “A year ago, we were trying to leverage all the different grant funding we got and try and see if we could — as we were going through the original Headlee millage — seeing if we could get funding to do a bigger project, which wasn’t supported in the fall. So, we pivoted back to the original plan, which was this support facility.”

Parks and Recreation Director LaReina Wheeler said additional restrooms also will help support the splash pad, which is one of the park’s main attractions.

“The addition of the splash pad brings more people to the park, and we only have the current restroom building that we have there, which doesn’t accommodate as many people,” she said.

According to Wheeler, the number of people permitted to be on the splash pad at once is connected to how many restrooms are on-site.

Wheeler said they first noticed they would need more restrooms to accommodate the visitors when the splash pad opened in 2022.

“The amount of restrooms that we currently have in the park reduces … the amount of users that we could have on a splash pad drastically,” she said.

“We’re looking to add new playground equipment as well to the park,” she continued. “With all those current and planned new improvements, (it) will also bring more people to the park, which, again, our current restroom can’t accommodate the increased amount of visitors we’ll have to our park.”

Wheeler said construction of the facility will start later this year and be completed by next summer.

“We plan to, with this building, sell concessions so we can cater to more people within our park, which will ultimately allow them to spend more time in the park, as opposed to having to leave, to go get something to eat or go get something to drink,” she said. “We do want to make them more comfortable in the park so we will be able to sell some concessions as well out of this building, in addition to lend park equipment out as well just to provide more opportunities for our visitors to be able to enjoy the park and play in the park, whether that’s a pickleball paddle or a basketball or Frisbees or something of that nature.”