The park is situated within the Woodview II neighborhood and the park has no official name. It is wedged in between two streets of houses, allowing residents of those houses to easily peer out towards the park from their backyards. There’s a pathway that runs alongside the park. This pathway was usually reserved for those taking a walk, riding bikes, or walking dogs. This pathway intersected and merged into sidewalks along the main streets, making walking along this area very accessible.
The park itself was split into three spaced sections, allowing for people to have a sense of distance between each other. This space is very public, considering that anyone within their backyards could look out into the park. As far as seating went, there was only one place to sit which was a pavilion wedged between the other two park sections with a metal roof, filled with three industrial picnic tables that had been bolted into the ground.
The park was not often used. This could have been to a variety of reasons like the neighborhood’s demographic, weird behavior amongst the park children like engaging in mini (non-violent) “turf wars”, and access to after school programs and another park nearby. As the years passed and the original park kids grew up, moved away, etc, I saw more young mothers coming to the park with their toddlers and babies.
The pathway that merged into the sidewalks of the busier streets allowed for less disjointed and more continuous walking. There was, however, another walking path that lead straight into the woods. This path very much was made for nature walks, though there was no crosswalk across the street to get to it, leading people to have to cross when no cars were coming by. I’m sure this discouraged many walkers, seeing as I almost never saw any while I was walking in the nearby woods.
Besides the disjointed nature path, the nearby area had many great walking opportunities, with sidewalks on nearly every street, even a sidewalk leading to the Shoppette, a small convenience store. The path from the park also merged with a sidewalk that lead all the way to the elementary school, meaning children could go to school, play at the park, and even get snacks at the Shoppette safely through sidewalks.
Despite this park being well connected and accessible to most people, it was rarely used and only used by not only neighborhood kids, but kids who belonged to the streets it was wedged between. Almost every kid that frequented the park could see it from their backyard. Reasons for this could have been the fact that there was another park a few streets away or simply lack of engagement due to other factors I have yet to find out.
