Beechmont Neighborhood Association

Cliff Park

Outstanding?

Cliff Park's face-lift pleases neighborhood
Improvements to small site cost $100,000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Steve Chaplin
Special to The Courier-Journal

Once home to mosquitoes during the days and often to hoodlums at night, the tiny reserve known as Cliff Park at the west end of Woodlawn Avenue is a grassy, shaded corridor that adds a brush stroke of green to the neighborhood.

No one could be happier about what $100,000 worth of improvements have done than Betty Hill, who lives three houses from the park, which has mature shade trees, picnic tables and play equipment.

The money came from Metro Parks and Louisville Alderman Dan Johnson's neighborhoodproject fund.

''Now you see parents walking down through there with their children,'' said Hill, a Cliff Avenue resident for more than 33 years. ''I think they've done a really nice job.''

Hill recollected days past when storm water sat in the small park for days. And there were times when ''the wrong element'' would hang out there at night.

But with help from the Metropolitan Sewer District, which installed a drain and improved the control of storm runoff, the soggy ground and the nuisances that come with it have been solved, Johnson said.

''It used to be a swamp and it was just awful,'' he said. ''People were constantly dealing with water.''

The most recent improvements include construction of a 40-foot iron-and-wood pedestrian bridge over the creek that bisects the park.

A new sidewalk was built and play equipment added. Most pleasing to Hill was the last improvement: the addition of tall, acorn-style light poles like the ones in the nearby Woodlawn business district.

Those stem from the desire to make the park as safe as possible, Johnson said.

''We had heard of some gangtype problems there, but the police have taken care of that for some time,'' he said. ''Then LG&E got the lights up as the last stage and that pretty much solved it.''

Metro Parks spokesman Jason Cissell said the new sidewalk, connecting Rutland and Cliff avenues, gives neighbors easy access to the park. All that remains to be done is a final walk-through to make sure all of the contractor's responsibilities have been met.

''We're ready to sign off on it,'' Cissell said. ''We were happy to help on it. Apparently some neighbors went to Alderman Johnson and said they needed some help.''

The new bridge is notable, Cissell said, because the structure, including the rails, is rustcovered and will remain that way as part of a new graffiti deterrent.

Not only are graffiti artists less likely to spray paint on rusted surfaces, but the surface, if it is painted or scratched, is easy to maintain.

''You can scrape off the paint and the rust comes back,'' Cissell said. ''Or if they carve into it, the rust will come back. The color blends in well, so we're trying that in a couple of places.''

Johnson said next on his palette of small-park improvements will be nearby Bellevue Park, another small space left vacant for the same reason as Cliff Park: It is an MSD sewer easement that has large pipes under it.

''It won't be this year,'' Johnson said. ''But next fiscal year we plan to do the same thing at Bellevue.''


^^ Back to top

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe!
Click here to get the C-J delivered to your door each morning.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Home · News · Sports · Business · Features · Louisville Scene · Classifieds · Jobs · Cars · Homes · Marketplace · Contact Us · Search

Cliff Park and how it began

Cliff Park II

Pocket Park? Not really. Cliff Park stsrted life as a drainage easement. It still is. It can’t be built on and years ago there was talk about a street being built over it. That never happened. So what has it been used for over the years?

The drainage easement runs from Rutland over to the 4700 block of Southern Parkway. Years ago it was what my Grandmother called Commons. It wasn’t really, but it was used in common by the neighborhood. It was not unusuaual to see a horse or goat hobbled there to graze. Many of the houses had barns and carrisge houses and , in the early days, people had carriages and wagons and kept horses. A few Children had goats and goat carts. My uncle did.

We children picked wildflowers there and built waddle and, our version of thatched, huts as clubhouses. Periodically it was scythed so trees didn’t get a chance to develop. There weren’t the cutting laws in force then that we have now. The stretch between 6 th and Bellevue has a catch basin, and, as children, we used to lie on our bellies and watch the dragonflys and bugs floating on the surface of the water. Periodically, we would catch tadpoles and polywogs in jars and take them home in secret and watch them grow until our mothers caught us with them in the house and said, "Pour that out!" and we were out of business..

Then things changed and the places we played in became gardens, Victory Gardens. The country was at war and everybody was asked to do their part for the war effort by growing their own vegetables while the farmers concentrated on feeding the Forces and raising grain for ammunition. The neighbors grew corn and tomatoes, pole beans, okra, sweet peppers, lettuce and many other things. They seemed to thrive there and I do not remember a single incident of damage or theft from these gardens. Everybody was proud of them.

Finally, the War was over and for some years , people continued to garden there. Eventually, the private lots adjoining the easement were developed with housing and the easement took on a different usage. Moat of it was turned into lawn area and maintained by adjoining property owners. The parcel on the East side of Bellevue became a site for a tot lot and the west side became a parking lot for the American Legion Hall. The parcel on Southern Parkway became a private parking lot for an apartment building and Cliff Park just seemd to grow up in weeds and trees.. It was rather steep and after a rain, it got muddy. The neighbors had cut a dirt path through it to get to the Library, the Boulevard and the shops on Woodlawn. Finally it was decided to make it a little park so that someone would be responsible for it’s maintenance and people could still walk through.

The new improvements, especially the foot bridge, are attractive and welcome, I am sure . In fact, it looks as good as any small park I have ever seen in any town in this country or any.other. Take a trip by it and I feel that you will agree completely that the City and Dept of Parks have done a very good job of giving that part of the neighborhood a little piece of quiet recreation and beauty that any neighborhood would relish. May Cliff Park continue to be an asset to it’s part of the neighborhood.