Residents in Pittsboro may have noticed some increased construction activity in parks lately. That activity may even be increasing in the coming months. Pittsboro Mayor Kyle Shipp spoke to Chapelboro about the town’s recent investment in parks.
“This fiscal year we have put close to $1 million into existing parks in town,” said Shipp. “That’s close to 10 percent of our budget. It’s a significant investment for a town of our size.”
New playground equipment was recently installed at the Kiwanis Park, and upgrades are in progress at many others. Shipp pointed to several ongoing projects in parks as examples, including adding bathrooms to Mary Hayes Barbara Holmes Park and adding a new play structure at Rock Ridge Park. Perhaps the most visible project is the re-imagining of McClenahan Street Park.
“[We are] completely redoing it — redoing the basketball courts, the tennis courts, adding the baseball fields,” said Shipp.
The existing baseball field across from Pittsboro Elementary School will become part of the park, with the town taking that responsibility from Chatham County. Another addition, several years in the making, is a skate park. Years of community support and fundraising resulted in the skate park getting the go-ahead earlier this year. The town expects construction on that addition to begin in November, along with even more improvements.
Shipp continued, “Soon we also hope to add bathrooms and a shade structure. And that’s going to be near some new development as well. So that’s going to be a signature park here in the future.”
Numerous improvements are coming to McClenahan Street Park in Pittsboro, including new basketball courts, tennis courts and a skate park. (Image via Andrew Stuckey)
In addition to improving existing parks, there will also be new parks coming to Pittsboro. Shipp explains, “We’ve got about 55 acres that Chatham Park gave the town on the Moncure Road. We have a bid out for a design of that park to help us figure out what does fit there and what works best with all of the other parks and to get a cost for that, because we know it’s going to be significant.”
A different part of the Chatham Park development will have a different town park.
“We are also working on design of another park that’s going up by the YMCA that they are building,” Shipp said. “There will be a town park next to there with some athletic fields.”
Shipp said this balance between upgrading their current parks and preparing new parks that will be needed in the future is all part of the town’s strategy.
“Trying to work on this master plan — we are making this big investment in our current parks,” Shipp said, “but also our staff is really looking ahead to the next 10-15 years and what the park needs are and making sure they are well distributed through new development.”
Part of that parks plan also includes enhancing the character of Pittsboro’s historic downtown.
“Downtown is something we really consider part of our parks,” Shipp said. “We’ve got the pocket park there; we’ve got the pop-up park. Continuing to add things to the pop-up park — a play structure will go in soon. We’ll have bathrooms there soon. And part of that investment this year is adding a downtown maintenance worker. So we have someone who continuously keeps up downtown, and plants flowers, and do some of those things we don’t think about much, but that really just makes our downtown better.”
Park upgrades will be ongoing throughout 2024. The town expects the tennis courts and basketball courts at McClenahan Street Park to reopen late this summer.
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