By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
On Sept. 28, Cazenovia will celebrate the official opening of Creekside Park with a community planting event.
The new park is a unique space located below the Cazenovia Public Library parking lot along Riverside Drive between Mill Street and Albany Street.
Community members are invited to bring divided perennials, groundcover or bulbs to plant on the property between 9 and 11 a.m. Extra shovels will be available and a guide will assist in the selection of planting locations.
Jocelyn Gavitt, president of the Cazenovia Area Community Development Association (CACDA), spearheaded the Creekside Park project, which she describes as “a playful park made by the community for the community.”
In addition to serving on the CACDA board, Gavitt is a licensed landscape architect — specializing in site design and community planning — and an instructor in the SUNY College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry (ESF) Department of Landscape Architecture.
In 2015, Gavitt ran a design workshop with her senior landscape architecture students that focused on transforming the creekside property into a vibrant recreational area.
The students visited the site and met with interested community members to gain an understanding of the project’s context and the community’s needs.
The class presented their preliminary designs to the community and received feedback.
The proposed design concepts were also published on a website to encourage community discussion.
“That garnered enough input for us to refine the [design],” Gavitt said. “Then I put together a plan that we could get a budget for.”
According to Gavitt, Project CAFÉ expressed support for the project very early on and quickly began raising funds.
The organization’s fundraising efforts — which included a particularly successful car raffle — helped to get the project off the ground.
The project gained additional financial support with help from CACDA Executive Director Lauren Lines, who secured a grant from the Central New York Community Foundation.
Cazenovia Garden Club, the Friends of the Library, and a donation from the Ninos family also helped to transform the park from an idea into a reality.
Throughout the development process, Gavitt worked closely with the library staff — including Director Betsy Kennedy and Children’s Program Coordinator Jenna Wright-Martin — to ensure that the park would best meet the needs of the library patrons.
“Jenna does so much with kids at the library, so it was important to figure out what kinds of things in the park would work well with the library’s programs,” Gavitt said.
The final design for the park includes the following features: a circular story hour space with rustic, wooden seating; natural areas for kids to explore; a concrete circular area imprinted with a checkers/chess board and the letters of the alphabet; two pergolas (large and small); picnic tables from Troyer’s Country Store and a climbing area with tunnels.
According to Gavitt, it was Kennedy who initially suggested she look into developing the property into a park.
“I had just read research that showed the benefits of children being in nature and the importance of children being more active,” Kennedy said. “Creekside Park addresses both issues. It will also be a place for socializing, which has positive impacts on families. I love the way Jocelyn’s design infused an early literacy element into the park as well . . . We hope to add a few more educational and fun elements. I have already heard many positive remarks on how wonderful the park is and we look forward to having an additional outdoor space for our children’s active learning projects.”
Many elements of the park were created from reclaimed materials.
“Before I did the final design for the park, I did a tour of the department of public works’ [stockpile and storage lot],” Gavitt said.
According to Gavitt, the tunnels are old culverts; the pergolas were constructed from telephone polls; the benches were made from old granite curbs; and the steps were fashioned from old canal wall caps.
The park is designed to foster discovery and natural play.
“We want to encourage play that is open ended and creative,” said Wright-Martin.
“There are also a variety of different textures and materials that children might not interact with regularly. You don’t normally have things like log rounds on a playground.”
The park was constructed with assistance from the Village of Cazenovia Department of Public Works and local contractors Mike Walker of Expert Building Services, Ben Cook, and Spruce Ridge Landscape & Garden Center.
“I cannot say enough great things about the Village of Cazenovia Department of Public Works,” Gavitt said. “They have been phenomenal. This project was put on their plate when they have a hundred other things to be doing, but if I ever said ‘I need this done now’ . . . it would be done the next day . . . Bill [Carr] and the guys in the DPW are really wonderful.”
Gavitt anticipates that the park — which is now unofficially open to visitors — will continue to evolve throughout the years.
Changes in the near future, according to Gavitt, include the replacement of the metal stairs leading from the upper to lower parking lots, and the installation of a sidewalk from the stairs down to the park.
Wright-Martin is also planning to install a nature-focused “sidewalk story” — a literacy and physical activity tool — to engage young readers.
“The pages of the book would be displayed, so as you move through the park, you could read the story,” she said.
The park’s creators also hope that community members will add their own personal touches to the space.
Suggestions for contributions, according to Wright-Martin, include painted rocks, carved/painted pumpkins, fairy houses, plants, or other natural embellishments that could help enhance the park.
“If people have ideas, we hope they will contact us with an idea they might like to implement,” Gavitt said.
Gavitt is also hopeful that the community will help to care for and maintain the park by pulling a few weeds, sweeping off the concrete, or picking up litter.
