East Texas

By BETTY WATERS
Staff Writer

BULLARD — This town’s only park has undergone a gradual, major transformation into an attractive recreation area featuring colorful, modern and safe playground equipment, new picnic tables, resurfaced tennis courts, an improved pavilion and decorative fencing, with more improvements on tap.

The upgrade of O.L. Ferrell Park, carried out over the last couple of years, has slowly turned the park into a focal point of the town.

On nice weather days, the park now attracts playing children accompanied by their mothers, as well as tennis, Frisbee, football and soccer players. Families frequently gather there for reunions and birthday parties, especially on weekends.

Now, passersby usually see both children and adults enjoying the refurbished park facilities.

That’s unlike in the past when the approximately five-acre triangular tract sandwiched between Rather Street and FM 2493 north of downtown sat largely unused and empty. In those days, the park was in disrepair, had outdated equipment, received little attention and failed to meet guidelines for safety and access under the federal Americans with Disability Act.

For many years, the city budget annually allocated $500 for park maintenance and improvement, a relatively small sum that did not go far toward funding expensive costs to improve the park and often went unspent.

“It was just a project that had been put aside, I think, in lieu of other things deemed more important; it was just a project that wasn’t tended to,” said Bullard resident Pam Frederick.

Looking back, Ms. Frederick says she was naïve in 2003 when she started selling fountain soft drinks at festivals and conducting other small money-making activities in the belief that she could raise enough funds to “fix” the park. She got a boost when someone told her a group of mothers had earlier gotten together and tried to develop a park fund through fund-raising that netted $2,000-$3,000.

Still, funds generated fell short of the sums needed to buy new playground equipment and foot other costs to spruce up the park.

The park project was one of the reasons Ms. Frederick decided to run for the City Council. “I felt like I could get a little farther ahead on the project as a council person,” said Ms. Frederick, now in her fifth year as a council member.

“There were things that I thought needed to change or could improve. I didn’t want to just say that and expect somebody else to do it. If I needed to see change, I knew I needed to get involved and see what it took to make that change,” Ms. Frederick said. “I’m hesitant to critique or criticize something unless I’m willing to get in and do it.”

In the meantime, Ronald E. Fix, then city engineer, and Mark Priestner, an urban planner, informed Mrs. Frederick that grant funds are available through the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for park projects and offered to help apply.

“That’s kind of how the project got off the ground. … Ron and Mark basically developed the grant application,” Ms. Frederick said. “We (city officials) were granted a dollar for dollar matching grant.”

She explained that the first phase is a $100,000 project, which is being funded with a $50,000 Texas Parks and Wildlife Department grant that requires a matching local investment of donated labor and supplies worth $50,000.

After the grant was secured in August 2005, the city changed to a city manager form of government and hired Larry Morgan as city manager. “His background was largely in park planning and development in the park system in Tyler. It has just come together,” Ms. Frederick said. “I had the idea but these other people are taking it and (carrying it out); it’s been great.”

One of the most noticeable improvements has been installation of a recently purchased playground entertainment system with ADA compliant material underneath the playground equipment to create a safe fall zone. The new playground system has swing sets, including a baby swing, slides and other equipment.

“We took out all the dangerous equipment and replaced it,” Ms. Frederick said, citing as an example an old fashioned merry-go-round and monkey bars that were removed.

The pavilion was improved with donated stone, metal posts and a metal roof. Stonemason Floyd Griffin donated his time and work to stone around the pavilion’s columns, making it more attractive, and another volunteer, Joe Phillips of Pro Tech Track & Tennis Surfaces, resurfaced the park’s two tennis courts, a project that otherwise would have cost an estimated $12,000.

“It has been truly a community project because we’ve had quite a bit of in-kind service from contractors helping us out,” Morgan said.

Prior to sprucing up the tennis courts, the city had taken down the tennis nets out of concern someone might get hurt playing on the courts, which had cracks as much as six inches wide.

Improvement of the tennis courts has been “a big thing” that has drawn people to the park, Ms. Frederick said. Since resurfacing of the courts, “there are a lot of times I want to play tennis and I can’t because the courts are packed,” she added.

Other projects still to be carried out in the first phase of the park upgrade will involve moving overhead power lines underground and constructing a new loop for the park’s multi-use walking trail to connect with an existing trail.

The new trail will be six-foot wide and 1,270-feet long as it circles around the playground and through the park’s north end. It will connect with an existing trail via an attractive bridge built by Eagle Scouts over a drainage channel. “They did a fabulous job. It’s very well built,” Ms. Frederick said.

The existing asphalt trail around the tennis courts and through a grassy open field in the park’s south end where people play soccer, football, Frisbee and other games is about four foot wide, a third of a mile long and in poor condition. Plans call for widening and improving the old trail and for turning the tennis courts into dual purpose courts for use as both basketball and tennis courts.

State officials recently informed the city that it is eligible to apply for a second grant to further develop the park. “We are definitely interested (in securing more state funding); it’s going to be an ongoing project,” Ms. Frederick said, explaining that improvements to be proposed for second phase funding are still to be decided.

She is pleased with how much has been accomplished so far. “It’s a slow process; you have to do it one little piece at the time, but (the park) has finally become like it should have been. I just wanted it to be a place where families wanted to be and kids could play and there was something for them to do,” Ms. Frederick said.

“Families are using the park and I hear all the time how great the park looks. The fact that families in Bullard are enjoying it … that’s what I wanted. I love to drive by there and see that there’s no place to even park because it is so full. That’s how it should be.”

A boy hangs upside down on the monkey bars Friday at Ferrell Park in Bullard.
(— Staff Photo By Mark Roberts)