RELATED: Hall of Famer Schmidt has fond memories of Dayton park
About two dozen volunteers gathered Saturday morning at the park, which is tucked away behind homes near North Dixie Drive and Siebenthaler Avenue. Residents, such as Brooke Queen, brought their children to help plant maple, sweet gum and dogwood trees in the cold ground.
“When we first came here there were more strip clubs and signs for that than there were parks,” said Queen, who moved to the Deweese-Ridgecrest neighborhood in 2014.
The group — Deweese-Ridgecrest Youth Ambassadors — started meeting in early May. At the time, the park featured a shelter in need of paint and upgrades to the bathrooms, and a playground, but the equipment was cordoned off with yellow caution tape because of lack of maintenance.
Queen serves as the group’s president.
“To have a park for our community and our children is crucial. We got a group together that really cares about making it happen and it’s slowly starting to happen now,” she said.
When the Memorial Day tornado hit, it tore down about 10 mature trees. The storm damaged the shelter’s roof and the fence surrounding the park. While the tornado clean-up in the neighborhood temporarily delayed plans to fix the park, the storm was also a blessing, taking out trees in an area more visible for a new playground to be installed in the spring.
Tornado relief funds will be used to fix the roof and the bathrooms will be getting overhauled.
2016: Dayton’s income tax hike passes
Julie Arias, DRYA secretary, said they thought fixing the park was going to be “an uphill battle,” but the community rallied at a bake sale fundraiser earlier this year and “there’s already been a lot of progress.”
“We’re hoping for the ripple effects that come from the re-greening of our neighborhood, that come from the community coming together and us getting to know each other again,” Arias said. “It’s an effort to make the whole better than the sum of its parts.”
There still stands an old baseball backstop in the northwest corner of the park. Connie Nisonger, Dayton community development specialist, said that’s where former Philadelphia Phillies star and Dayton-native Mike Schmidt learned to hit a baseball.
“He would be in this park from dawn until his mother called him home about dark playing baseball,” said Nisonger, who repeated stories she’s heard of Schmidt knocking on doors around the neighborhood to recruit people to pitch to him at the park.
Plans include bringing in picnic tables, a walking path around the perimeter, and maybe, if Arias’ youngest gets her wish, “a splash pad.”
Nisonger said the voter-approved income tax increase in 2016 will be used to help bring the park back to life.
“”Every community development specialist loves to encounter a group like (DRYA) who are the catalyst behind this. They’re driving the bus. They’re making it happen,” she said.
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