The Winona Lake Park Board invited people to hear about its five-year plan at a meeting on Tuesday, March 9, at the Winona Lake Senior Center. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WINONA LAKE — The Winona Lake Park Board has approved its five-year plan.

At a meeting on Tuesday, March 9, at the Winona Lake Senior Center, the board approved its 2021-26 master plan. It’s to go next before the Winona Lake Town Council for approval.

The plan then goes to the state. It’s necessary to apply for grants for the parks.

Before the vote Tuesday, the board shared in person and via Zoom the details of that plan with the public.

One of the upcoming projects is adding items to Bibler Park, located at Faunn Street. The board plans to add a new play structure and a new concrete pad/basketball goal and/or new soccer goal in 2021/22.

This year, the board plans to buy more paddleboats, kayaks and paddleboards for people to rent. In 2024, it hopes to add a public boat rental launch/pier for small boats to Winona Lake Limitless Park.

A bike skills park is being planned for 2025.

The full list of items may be found here.  The master plan as it stands now may be found here.

Trail extension

A question that came up during the meeting was about extending the town’s trail system. As that’s a town project and not a parks project, Town Manager Craig Allebach shared the details.

The plan is to add more segments to the trail system to extend it from the Grace College athletic fields to CR 250E and along Pierceton Road.

“Bids will be accepted on Thursday at 2 o’clock for an extension that goes from Miller Field to Christ Covenant Church and then Christ Covenant Church has built a playground and pavilion out there and they’re currently kind of finishing things up,” said Allebach.

A map of the proposed extensions may be viewed below.

Friends of the Park

The board also brought up at the meeting the new Friends of the Park group.

Park Department Director Holly Hummitch told InkFreeNews the department has never had such a group before that she can recall.

“Really we’re hoping to build a community of advocates and volunteers to both kind of be our cheerleaders, people wranglers, but also ideas people for how we can be creative and implement this five-year plan going forward,” said Board Member Meghan Smith of the group.

Anyone is welcome to come to the first meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, April 12, at the Winona Lake Community Center, 1590 Park Ave. People may also email Smith at [email protected] for more information.

This aerial map done by A&Z Engineering of Fort Wayne shows several planned trail extensions in Winona Lake, including those depicted in red and blue. For reference, the Grace College athletic fields are in the top left corner and the road running diagonally through the map is Pierceton Road.