On a recent late-summer Wednesday morning, construction workers milled about a small building on Bridge View Drive, just on the eastern rim of Maplewood Park.
The muddy site overlooking the duck pond was crisscrossed with the tread marks of construction vehicles and makeshift gravel walkways.
But in less than a year, this site is expected to be the hub for a new era of Maplewood Park.
The building — which has served in the past as a police station, a recreation center, and, most recently, a storage space for police motorcycles — will become the park’s nature center. Outside, an inclusive playground will be built, along with space for nature activities and outdoor lessons. The playground will include a sensory portion, designed for children on the autism spectrum.
The renovation plans, which are backed by more than $11 million in city, state and federal fund, also include a new loop trail, a teaching garden, more vehicle connections to the park, and a bus drop-off point.
Holding golden shovels, officials from the city and the state Department of Environmental Conservation broke ground last week in a ceremony, and If things go according to plan, the park will be completed by May.
“One of the greatest threats our children and families face today is the growing detachment from the actual world around them," Mayor Malik Evans said at the groundbreaking.
Pantomiming using a smartphone, he said: “Everybody's doing this. I'm hoping, when people are in this damn park, that they take their phones, put them in their back pocket, and just enjoy what we have here.”
The plans to renovate Maplewood Park began in 2019, when the city released a document outlining potential new amenities there, including solar panels and a public kitchen, among other things.
Little was done until 2022, when the city moved to allocate $5.5 million of federal pandemic relief funds into the project. Coupled with that was the adoption of a children’s "outdoor bill of rights," which Evans said served as a motivator for the project.
That bill of rights is not a binding policy, but rather a statement of values by the city of what every child should have access to: learning to swim, seeing a starry sky, hiking on a trail, and going camping.
“Countless studies point to the benefits of teaching children about nature and giving them time to play outdoors, both structured and unstructured,” said Shirley Green, the commissioner of the city's Department of Recreation and Human Services. “Exposure to nature leads to better test scores, better physical and mental health, and improve social and emotional relationships.”
Maplewood Park is on the north side on the western bank of the Genesee River and runs from Driving Park at its southern edge and just past Ridge Road to its north. It's one of the city’s most iconic slices of nature, featuring views of Lower Falls and the Maplewood Rose Garden on its southern end.
The city commissioned famed landscape architect and journalist Frederick Law Olmsted in 1888 to design the park, as well as its sister Seneca Park on the opposite side of the river.
Olmsted envisioned the twin parks as a means of capitalizing on, and preserving, the area's natural features.
“It is very desirable that the woods on the banks of the river below the park be preserved as they stand at present,” an 1891 Democrat and Chronicle article quoted him as saying. “…The land is certainly of no use for industrial purposes, nor for any purposes that I can think of. The board would do well to provide for the preservation of the trees.”
Olmsted, likely best known for designing New York City’s Central Park, also designed Highland and Genesee Valley parks, the University of Rochester campus, and Jones Square in the Edgerton neighborhood.
Most of the funding for Maplewood Park renovations is through state and federal grants. Alongside the pandemic relief dollars, the project is supported by $3.1 million from the DEC, $975,000 from the New York Department of State, and $342,000 from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
The playground is funded by $1 million in city funds and $310,000 from the federal Community Development Block Grant program.
