City of LG Inks Deal For Parks Master Plan

The La Grange City Council inked a deal with the company Freese and Nichols to conduct a parks, open spaces and trails master plan for the City. The plan will cost the City $90,000 and should be complete in about 10 months.

Freese and Nichols will evaluate existing parks facilities and gather community input before recommending ways to grow and improve the City’s parks system.

“There will be three different assessments that we’ll do,” said Caitlin Admire, a project manager with Freese and Nichols. “We’ll do a demandbased assessment, which is the community telling us they want. Then we do a servicebased assessment. That is based on nation standards set by national boards. They say here is how many dog parks you should have in a city of x

size. The third one is resourcebased. So lets say a competition- level baseball stadium sounds great, but that’s expensive and maybe it’s lower on the list of priorities.”

“Based on all three of those assessments together, we make a list of top 10 indoor and outdoor recreation facilities and prioritize them,” Admire added.

Admire said the plan will not include specific design details or renderings of recommended park facilities or amenities.

Some city leaders seem especially interested in developing the Colorado River as part of the City’s parks system.

“Do you consider the river that runs through La Grange part of our potential parks?” Councilman Ken Taylor asked.

“Yes, that will be part of this look,” Admire said. “We’re working in Kerrville right now, not on a parks plan but a downtown plan. It has a lot of that – synergy with the river, access to the river, and that kind of stuff.

Taylor also spoke about community interest in a new swimming pool.

“There is a desire to build a very nice pool,” he said. “In our school, we have some really good swimmers, but they have to go to Brenham or other places to train.”

The Council unanimously approved the agreement with Freese and Nichols.