Fruitland Township officials have big improvement plans for the popular Nestrom Park, located next to the township hall on Nestrom Road.
They were hoping to finance the improvements all at once through a Michigan Department of Natural Resources grant they sought last year, but the application was not approved.
So township officials, still determined to upgrade the park, have decided to pursue the desired projects bit by bit, as funds become available.
That process began Monday night, when the board unanimously voted to spend $67,600 to resurface and widen the “loop road” that runs throughout the park and $30,700 to pave a parking area near the back of the park near the tennis courts and picnic area.
There is a lot more on the board’s “to-do” list for the park, which has been well-maintained over the years but has not had any significant improvements for decades, according to township supervisor Jeff Marcinkowski.
That list includes, but is not limited to: A new flush toilet restroom facility to replace the current port-a-johns; resurfacing and reconfiguring two tennis courts into one tennis court and four pickleball courts; adding handicap-accessible walkways; installing electronic gates; and replacing worn sections of a chain link fence around the perimeter of the park.
Board members were hoping all of that would be funded through the DNR grant application, which sought approximately $850,000, and were disappointed when the money was not approved.
“A lot of time went into developing this (the park master plan), and when we didn’t get the grant it was like taking the wind out of our sails a little bit,” Marcinkowski said. “Then we asked ourselves, what can we do, and we are in the process of taking some of these elements and doing them piecemeal.”
Resurfacing of the “loop road” that circles through the park and paving the parking area near the tennis and picnic areas are good first steps, according to Marcinkowski.
The park road is starting to get worn down, and the resurfaced road will be widened from 10 to 11 feet, he said. The existing pavement on the road will be taken up, ground and reused as the base for the improved road, topped by new asphalt.
The parking area is currently dirt, so the paving will be a big upgrade.
There is no schedule for the work to be completed, but Marcinkowski said he wants it to be “as soon as possible.”
“We are hoping for an April start with completion in May, in time for warm-weather use,” the supervisor said.
Nestrom Park has largely been known for its well-maintained baseball field for years. Last year the field was named in honor of the late Pete Sodini, a local baseball enthusiast who put in a lot of time developing and improving it over the years.
The field gets a lot of use. The North Muskegon High School baseball program uses it for practices during the spring, and the field is very busy with youth league games on summer weekends, Marcinkowski said.
The park also has other recreational options. There are picnic tables in the pavilions, a playground, shuffleboard courts, a horseshoe pit and a wooden stairway that leads down to the Duck Lake shoreline.
Future plans (part of the master plan) include adding two sand volleyball courts, finishing an existing youth soccer field, adding a fitness court and adding another picnic shelter.
“The idea is to give the park a shot of new life and make it more accessible to everybody,” he said. “We want to give it a facelift for the next 20 years or so.”
The township board’s top remaining priorities are the construction of the modern restroom facility and the reconfiguration of the current tennis courts into a combined tennis/pickleball facility, Marcinkowski said.
The current activities at the park already draw big crowds during warm-weather months, and new features will attract more people, making certain park improvements, like the new restroom facility, pretty important. That’s why Marcinkowski included $80,000 for the restroom upgrade in the fiscal 2024 general fund budget, which is expected to be approved by the board next week.
The budget is simply a spending plan, however, and the board would have to specifically approve the restroom upgrade for it to happen.
“When it’s really busy at the park on those game days, with 200 or more people plus the teams, the port-a-johns take quite a bit of abuse,” Marcinkowski said.
