By Malcolm Butler
A $1 million grant from the Louisiana Office of Community Development and a $50,000 donation from Legacy Foundation will fund major improvements at Lincoln Parish Park, including renovations to Legacy Park, walking trail repairs and a new parking lot.
The funding will allow Lincoln Parish officials to address aging infrastructure at one of the parish’s most popular recreational areas, with improvements to the park’s children’s playground serving as one of the project’s top priority.
Lincoln Parish Police Jury Parks, Recreation and Tourism Committee Chairman Dan Lord said the parish’s effort to secure the grant was more than a year in the making.
“Last year we tried to get it and West Monroe was part of the deal,” Lord said. “They were possibly going to get half, we were going to get half, and then it fell through. We applied again this year and we were able to receive the whole grant.”
Lord said the total project cost exceeded the $1 million grant award. A $50,000 contribution from Legacy Foundation, along with additional funding from the Police Jury, allowed the full project to move forward.
“We were a little over budget,” Lord said. “We ended up with the million, $50,000, and then we kind of found some money through our budget to make this work.”
Construction is scheduled to begin today with work at Legacy Park, where the existing playground will close while crews renovate the play area.
Lincoln Parish Park Director Alfred Young said the project will primarily focus on resurfacing the playground, adding new benches and replacing portions of the existing playground equipment rather than installing an entirely new playground.
“It’s not going to be all new equipment,” Young said. “The main thing is it’s going to be resurfaced.”
Additional improvements include resurfacing the walking trail around the lake, drainage work in areas where water routinely washes across the path, electrical upgrades throughout the park and construction of an auxiliary parking lot to provide additional parking for visitors.
Young said the parking lot project could begin while playground renovations are underway, with the walking trail improvements expected to follow.
Lord said the additional parking will help accommodate the park’s growing number of visitors.
“There’s going to be a parking lot to kind of fill in the gap for places for people to park,” Lord said.
Young said the projects have already completed the public bidding process and pre-construction meetings have been held, allowing work to begin immediately. He expects all improvements to be completed before Thanksgiving.
Lord said the funding is especially important because Lincoln Parish Park does not receive the same level of state funding as many other public parks.
“There’s not a whole lot of revenue that comes through to take care of the upkeep of the park,” Lord said. “This is not a state-funded park. We kind of rely on these type of grants to pull us through.”
He said Lincoln Parish Park serves a wide variety of residents and visitors each year, from families using the playgrounds to walkers, campers and mountain bikers, making continued investment in the facility important to the parish’s quality of life.
“It’s a valuable asset to us,” Lord said. “A lot of people go out and walk the park. So many families take their kids to these parks, and that was one of the top priorities — fixing the little kiddie parks that were diminishing.”
