Harding Park rink improvements pushed to next year

FERNDALE — Ferndale’s hopes to improve its Harding Park inline skating rink will have to wait until next year.

The Ferndale City Council approved at its Aug. 11 meeting a Land and Water Conservation Fund development project agreement with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. This was in regard to $100,000 in grant funding to replace the rink.

Harding Park’s inline skating rink is more than 61 years old and, according to the city, has been breaking down in recent years.

According to city documents, the scope of construction at Harding Park includes the removal and replacement of the existing hockey rink, the installation of new park amenities and installation of stormwater mitigation systems around the hockey rink.

The city was awarded the grant funding in December and aimed to begin construction on improvements this summer, but Ferndale has to wait until the state acts on the grant.

“We have to wait until the state of Michigan goes through their process to issue the grant agreement, which will be effective this fall,” Parks and Recreation Director LaReina Wheeler said. “Due to that, we don’t want to rush the project and we plan on doing some crowdfunding to fund the remaining amount that we need to incorporate everything that we have planned for the project.”

Ferndale now plans for construction to start in the spring.

The replacement project is expected to cost an estimated $200,000. Current plans call for the city to raise the rest of the money through a Patronicity campaign.

The city aims to raise $62,500 from the crowdfunding.

“We’re going to be applying for a Patronicity grant. ... If we raise ($62,500), then they will match ($62,500), but we have to raise the targeted amount of funds in order to receive them,” Wheeler said.

Mayor Raylon Leaks-May said the rink replacement project will help increase the usage of the city’s parks.

“I think it’s going to be just as utilized as the skate park, because I think when we bring some new amenities to our parks, it draws more community members to our parks. Every time I go past the skate park, I see it being utilized, and it’s just going to add a lot of attraction to Harding Park, which is one of the smaller parks in Ferndale. I think that it will be an attraction to that park, along with the walking paths and the amenities that Parks and Rec have been updating already,” Leaks-May said.

Leaks-May said she has heard from people that Harding Park has been neglected and not invested in by the city, but she hopes these improvements will change that perception.

“The fact that the Parks and Rec Department is looking for ways to really just update parks that have been underutilized and attract more attention to those parks, I think it’s wonderful. … It’s something that the city is excited about,” she said.