After almost two years of preparation, Dane County Parks is ready to show local residents what it has in store for Badger Prairie County Park.
The master plan for the park on the edge of the City of Verona - including the Madison Area Youth Soccer Association fields - will be presented at 7 p.m. Monday at the Verona Public Library, 500 Silent St. The biggest of many changes would drastically improve access to the current and proposed facilities there while eliminating cut-through traffic.
While it's essentially finished and ready for approval by the County Board, there's still ample opportunity for the public to offer its feedback and make suggestions.
"I think probably the biggest thing I'm looking for is reaction to traffic circulation and access to the park," said park planner Chris James.
If there are no major changes, James will put together a phasing plan - typically it's up to a five-year window for completion - and prepare a written report and bring it to the Parks Commission and the County Board for approval over the next couple of months. The first phase - which would add two parking lots, for a total of three, and eliminate vehicular access to the middle of the park - would hopefully be started in 2010.
The Parks department began gathering input from local residents and users of Badger Prairie in June 2007, soon after the county decided to rebuild the nursing home behind it. The two projects are separate but have been coordinated somewhat in order to take advantage of the changes necessary with the $22 million construction project.
Already two major changes have been effected. One was bicycle-pedestrian underpass below East Verona Avenue - coordinated with the city's rebuilding of that road - and another was the move of the 6-acre dog park to another part of the Badger Prairie grounds, a change that was met with enthusiasm by park users. That change came with an adjustment to the mountain bike trail - making it more challenging - also factoring in input from users and potential users.
Much remains to be done to better utilize the rest of the 350-acre park, however. The bicycle underpass will wind through the park - including the MAYSA soccer area - to meet Ice Age Junction on County Highway PD. And Parks staff envision increasing the popularity of the park to make more efficient use of it.
"What you're going to see on this plan is a lot more opportunity to get surrounding neighborhood people into the park," James said. "I think a lot of people don't know that park exists."
Among the new and improved amenities in the plan are an additional park shelter just south of Cross Country Road, where it intersects with East Pass, a small-dog exercise area to complement the larger one (on the same site as the old dog park), a playground and interpretive area near that park, connected by a trail to the new hospital, an equipment building for the aeromodeling field, a volleyball court near the existing shelter, a pair of Ice Age Trail kiosks (near the library and next to the Reddan fields), a nonprofit-run community garden south of the Military Ridge State Trail and a restored prairie area surrounding the water tower, which would eventually be removed.
Parks director Darren Marsh said when that happens, the mountain bike trail can be rerouted around the water tower, where it used to go.
"The goal is to restore that hill to the highest point (along the terminal moraine) to a native landscape," he said.
But the most important - and major - change is improving traffic flow and access.
Accomplishing both goals at the same time was a challenge, but ultimately it came down to creating three separate vehicular access points that were not linked together. Originally James looked at separating the two existing entrances - from the library lot and from Nesbitt Road - but through discussions with park users and public information sessions similar to next week's, it became apparent that a third would be useful.
"I think (the plan) represents pretty closely most of the input we've received over the last year and-a-half," James said.
Traffic has been a major source of complaints, Marsh said, with walkers and bicyclists finding it difficult to go up and down the large hill along the road while cars scream by well beyond the 15 mph speed limit. And pedestrians are uncomfortable crossing Cross Country, with its 45 mph speed limits.
"Right now we want to try to get a handle on the traffic flow, that's the major goal," Marsh said. "And get people to use areas but then have it so they would get out in parking lots and access through different access points."
And there would be lots of those.
In addition to the new parking lot, gate and kiosk at the library and the existing access off Nesbitt Road, pedestrians could enter from the south, along the Ice Age Junction bike trail, and at four crosswalks from the north, along Cross Country Road. One would link with the northeast gate of the dog park - which was built in last year but not opened - another would be on the northern part of the bike trail and connect to the parking lot, playground and shelter there, and the other two would be at East Pass and Stonebridge Drive in the Maple Grove neighborhood.
James said the department is considering requesting motion-activated crossing lights at those crossings.
The idea, Marsh said, is to make sure the park is more of a refuge for recreation than a place to drive through.
"We're trying to make this more of a greenspace that you have access points instead of bisecting it all over," Marsh explained. "This park really provides a separation between Verona and City of Madison."
The other part of the park planning process is the MAYSA-leased fields on opposite sides of County Highway PD, and the changes there could come with a roundabout because of the immense traffic flow on tournament weekends.
MAYSA is planning to realign the fields to the north and improve its facilities to the south. Those updates are being coordinated with the other Badger Prairie improvements to make everything work together.
"That started a year ago, and we started tying it in with Badger Prairie park," Marsh explained. "We wanted them to look at traffic patterns, ingress and egress."
Monday's presentation will include an overview of the planning process and a display of the proposed master plan, as well as a site survey showing the current facilities.
The plan can be viewed after April 13 on the Parks Web site, www.co.dane.wi.us/lwrd/parks. For information on the master plan or the meeting at the library, call James at 224-3763.
