GAINESVILLE – Thursday evening could see the last hurdle cleared in an ongoing, years-long effort to bring a new park to Gainesville’s southeast side.
That’s the night of the Hall County Commission voting session, and commissioners plan to officially accept $536,500 of grant money from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program.
Even the name of the grant takes time to say, joked Becky Ruffner, Marketing and Public Relations Specialist with the Hall County Parks and Leisure Department, as she brought the agenda item to the commission work session on Monday.
It was in June of 2020 that Commissioner Jeff Stowe told his fellow commissioners the funding to begin work on Butler Park was in “the final stages”, but that was fourteen months ago.
So Stowe smiled broadly and applauded softly as Ruffner began her presentation. Everyone laughed and Stowe said whimsically, “This has only been four years in the making.”
Hall County’s application has been approved by the state for the grant program and officially accepting the funds is the final formality for the county.
“A cash match of $250,000 is required,“ Ruffner reminded commissioners, but those funds have already been budgeted, kept on hold and now await their use.
Stowe said at the end of the work session that getting a new park constructed in southeast Gainesville, an area he said in 2019 “has been underserved by our parks department” was something he pledged to work for when he first ran for the District 4 seat in 2012.
“We looked at a lot of parcels, vetted a lot of things, and I just want to publicly thank you for getting us to the ‘start of the finish’ of this project,” Stowe said.
Some site preparation work at the 13-acre parcel just off Athens Street and behind the Hall County Health Department is already underway, but once the grant program funds have been received, according to Hall County staf,f work on the park should begin in earnest and as soon as possible.
