Waterloo’s Mary Allen Park to be a summer surprise
WATERLOO — The first urban park expansion in the City of Waterloo’s history is only weeks away from completion, just in time for summer.
“I can’t help but smile every time I walk by the site now,” said Coun. Melissa Durrell, who pushed hard for the $1.2-million park expansion project before it was approved by council in February 2016.
“It’s on a major walking route for kids on their way to school, and in the last three weeks we’ve seen changes on the site almost every day.”
Mary Allen Park was originally built on half a hectare of land near the intersection of Allen Street East and Willow Street in the early 1990s, and the city made upgrades and playground improvements in 2002 and 2010.
The new park, in a neighbourhood that is among the oldest in the city, should be open by about the third week of June.
The new play area will include a park pavilion, games tables, an open lawn area, natural play features such as logs or boulders, a paved area for basketball and
hockey, and will incorporate playground equipment from the original park.
This new expansion nearly doubles the size of the park by adding about a third of a hectare of land south of the original park, which was formerly a parking lot for the nearby St. Louis Catholic school before the school closed permanently in 2005.
The city purchased both the lot and the school in 2012 for about $560,000 with the intention of eventually expanding the park.
The city sold the school to a local developer in November 2013 for adaptive reuse as condos.
Workers were on-site Monday spreading soil and bark chips.
Andrea Bazler, Waterloo’s parks project co-ordinator, said a number of items still need to be completed before the park can open to the public, including:
• Final grading of the site;
• Installation of furniture (including a ping-pong table, benches, a community harvest table, bike racks and other games tables). They should be installed this week;
• Planting of trees and laying of sod. The sod is scheduled to be laid by the end of the week, weather permitting.
The city won’t take control of the site until the sod is established and mowed at least twice.
“Right now, there are so many things on the go that the list is changing almost daily,” Bazler said. “Overall, I’m very happy with the project.”
Durrell said the park was supposed to be ready last November, but the delay allowed the community to raise funds in November and December. They collected about $5,000 to help pay for some of the new climbing equipment.
Durrell said the fundraising has helped give the community some ownership of the project and is a continuation of the city’s efforts to have residents involved in the park’s redesign.
The city and the construction consultant hosted public information meetings in the fall of 2015, and the public’s feedback was used to develop three preliminary design concepts. Those three concepts were eventually amalgamated into the final design.
Bazler said the project is within it’s $1.2-million budget, which included about $460,000 for site remediation.
That remediation was necessary largely due to the site’s history as a parking lot, as well as the home of E.O. Weber Furniture Factory, which was gutted by fire on Oct. 24, 1930.
The building was evacuated and no one was injured, but media reports at the time suggest flames shot 30 metres into the air. The Record story at the time described it as the “worst fire in the history of Waterloo.”
This is the first urban park expansion in Waterloo’s history, but it may not be the last.
In May 2017, Waterloo’s finance and strategic planning committee approved funding to buy and demolish two properties south of Alexandra Park, on Alexandra Avenue, in order to expand that urban park. Work on that project has yet to begin.
Durrell said it’s important for the city to invest in small, urban parks such as Mary Allen and Alexandra as continued intensification brings even more residents to the city core.