Have you ever wished you could design a new park for your neighborhood? The citizens of Blacksburg, Virginia recently did just that. In the early 1990s, a new highway interchange project created an area of surplus property where the old interchange was located. In the late 1990s, the Town of Blacksburg initiated discussions with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to transfer this property to the Town upon completion of the interchange. While a portion of this property is reserved for commercial development, approximately 28 acres was set aside for the development of a new park for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Anderson & Associates Project Manager and Associate Vice President of Land Development, Trevor Kimzey, worked with Dean Crane, the Town’s Director of Parks & Recreation, and Adele Schirmer, the Town’s Director of Planning & Engineering, to implement a process that included the community for the duration of the process. "The Town demonstrated a firm commitment to involving the public from start to finish," Kimzey said. "This was apparent throughout the process."

At the first public meeting on February 13, 2006, eight groups were formed of public participants. The groups designed their group’s ideal park using an aerial photo background and cardboard cutouts of ball fields, soccer fields, playgrounds, parking lots, and picnic shelters, all to the same scale. The result was eight separate plans, one from each group of citizens. At that meeting, the public also had a chance to submit comments to the Town on what they would like the park to include and features to consider when developing the property.

Those eight plans were collated and condensed into three unique plans presented at the second public meeting on March 8, 2006. Attendees of this second public meeting commented on the plans, saying what they liked and disliked about each one. The detailed comments from this meeting, along with an engineering feasibility study were considered, and from these sources, a single master plan for the park was developed. A&A assisted the Town with a public display of the park master plan at the Recreation Department, and solicited comments from the public. This truly is a community park, with input from everyone who attended a meeting, responded to a survey, or reviewed the plans on display.