Topeka 2000 asked to honor City Park

The old City Park on the south bank of the Kansas River was more important to many Topekans than Gage Park.

Jack Alexander, who served as water commissioner on the old Topeka City Commission and was the first black elected to a city governing body, gave qualified support Monday to converting the old City Park into the new Millennium Park. It is a good idea, he said, but the new park should contain some memorial to the old City Park.

Non-whites weren't allowed to swim in the Gage Park Swimming Pool, he said, so they went to City Park. City Park was where Topekans of all races could participate in swimming, softball, tennis and other activities.

And at Mayor Joan Wagnon's Monday afternoon news conference, organizers revealed their hidden hope of someday seeing an aerial tramway across the Kansas River connecting Millennium Park with the former Union Pacific Depot in North Topeka.

The Topeka City Council will be asked tonight to adopt a capital budget for the year 2000 outlining what major construction projects and major equipment purchases will be made next year.

Among the projects being recommended by Wagnon is Millennium Park. The park, first proposed by the Topeka 2000 Committee, would reclaim much of the area of the old City Park on the south side of the Kansas River between the Kansas Avenue and Topeka Boulevard bridges.

Wagnon has proposed issuing $100,000 in tax-supported general obligation bonds to get the project started. She also is proposing using $200,000 in unused Community Development Block Grant funds from prior years and $200,000 in current year block grant funds, but she noted those allocations will have to go through a number of steps, including review by the Community Development Advisory Council, before being approved.

Originally, she had suggested the Topeka 2000 Committee would try to raise another $500,000 to produce a total budget of $1 million for the project. But on Monday, Wagnon and Topeka 2000 members were less specific on a goal for the private fund-raising.

Shirley Allen, committee chairwoman, said the $500,000 budget proposed by the city is a bare-bones budget covering mainly relocation of the police impoundment lot and City Scales building and constructing earth berms, a restroom/concession building, amphitheater, playground equipment, sidewalks and landscaping.

A number of amenities envisioned by the committee, such as a fountain and sculptural artwork, aren't in the city's budget. And the idea of the aerial tramway isn't in anyone's planning for the foreseeable future. It just was mentioned as an idea that came out of discussions for how the park could be developed in the future.

Alexander recalled working as a lifeguard at the old City Park Swimming Pool in the late 1940s. The ballfield in City Park was the site of the first fastpitch softball games in the city and often saw 2,000 to 3,000 people congregated there on weekends for those games, he said.

"My concern is do something in remembrance of the old park," Alexander said. "I may be the only person in town with these crazy feelings."

But Allen assured him the members of the committee, too young to remember the park as Alexander did, still were impressed with his plea.

"This is just a wealth of information," she said.

The committee already has begun doing research on the old park and looking for ways to incorporate part of the old park in the new one.

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