The park at 3 N. Miami Ave. also will get a nature-based playground, inclusive play spaces, a curved bike path, additional parking spots and other improvements.
Miamisburg Mayor Michelle Collins said the new components will draw more people to the park and benefit businesses throughout the city’s downtown.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
“It has been the city’s vision for 20 years to have the space serve as a gathering place for the community,” Collins said during a groundbreaking ceremony for the improvements Tuesday. “Strategically, the objective has been for the park to help attract people to our downtown business district and enhance our ongoing revitalization efforts.”
She said the improved Riverfront Park will be “one of the signatures facilities in Miamisburg and one of the finest along the Miami River Corridor.”
The budget for the improvement project is $5.7 million, according to Ryan Davis, the city’s Parks & Recreation director. Construction is scheduled to launch next Monday and take about a year.
The city has spent $5.7 million between 2003 and 2023 on various improvements, $2.1 million of which was a Clean Ohio Grant, Davis said. Improvements during that time period include property acquisition, construction of Water Street, Riverfront Park Archway, an interactive fountain and other improvements.
Construction is scheduled to launch next Monday and take about a year, Davis said. Riverfront Park is important when it comes to the city’s overall vision of economic revitalization, he said.
“This project is so much more than just a park,” he said. “It has everything from economic development and implications to the literal downtown like that couple square block area that’s directly next to the park, but it’s also just about the vitality of the community and making it a great place for people to kind of want to live and to want to come and recreate.
Davis said the improved Riverfront Park will create “a new front door” into the community.
“There are thousands of people that go up and down that bike path each year and right now, people just kind of keep on going past Miamisburg because it’s easy to,” he said. “Now (with the park project), the bike path will literally be coming into the community and bringing people directly downtown.”
The improvements also add more recreation features to the park and the ability to host events in a way that’s designed to bring people into the city, Davis said.
“It’s such a large portion of who we are as a community to be able to get this project done and allow it to serve the community like it was always kind of intended to,” he said.
City Manager Keith Johnson, who started as a city planner with Miamisburg about 30 years ago, said a consultant in the early 1990s identified the riverfront area and bikeway as assets sitting in the city’s backyard.
As the city worked to make something of those assets, business owners opened storefronts and restaurants in the city’s downtown hoping to capitalize on Miamisburg’s vision, Johnson said.
“That’s why you see so many of these restaurants that have put decks on the back with the understanding that there would be a park back here,” he said.
As the park plan evolved, the city set up an interim stage and watched as the public responded.
“What we saw, which was initially just a passive area for people to come out at, over a period of years it evolved into over 80 events during the year,” Johnson said. “So we knew the public was using it. We knew the people that came here went to the restaurants, so we knew we were on the right track, we just had to get to that particular point.”
Johnson said that as the city made it through the COVID-19 pandemic and its reserve funds began to accumulate, Councilman John Stalder suggested moving forward with plans to improve Riverfront Park.
Johnson emphasized that the project is being built with cash and the city is not borrowing money for it.
Riverfront Park is the first of two park projects the city will launch this year, he said. Improvements to Sycamore Trails Park are expected to start by year’s end, Johnson said.
Miamisburg Community Foundation President Greg Bell said the 10-year-old organization has embarked on its “most ambitious project” yet: raising at least $1.5 million to help fund the improvements to Riverfront and Sycamore Trails parks. The foundation is offering the opportunity to sponsor bricks for $250 or $500 each, trees for $1,000 each, benches for $2,500 each and naming rights for $250,000.
“Everyone can be a part of this and so far, we’re doing pretty good,” Bell said. “We’re about one-third of the way there, believe it or not.”
John Forman, owner of Bullwinkle’s Top Hat Bistro at 19 N. Main St., said when he purchased the restaurant 17 years ago, the area was markedly different with a body shop and several houses behind his business instead of Riverfront Park. He said he wouldn’t have spent nearly $750,000 into revamping the restaurant’s back area into a patio without the city investing into the park area.
“I’ve been willing to put money into the restaurant and keep it growing and doing more investment just for the fact that I know the park’s there and that’s going to help in the long term,” he said. “Plus, a lot of people come downtown, there’s always something happening every weekend. It seems like (there’s) a lot of activities, so it’s been great for business.”
Improving Riverfront Park will bring more people downtown and help continue steady business growth there, Forman said.
“We’re kind of already a destination restaurant on weekends, but I think that will grow that business even more so as more people learn about downtown Miamisburg and the activities that are going on downtown, it just brings not only the Miamisburg community together, but also other nearby communities to come down and visit,” he said.
About the Author
