Should Veterans Memorial and Admiral Mason parks be merged? These veterans think so.

The Veterans Memorial Park Foundation of Pensacola is proposing merging Veterans Memorial Park and Admiral Mason Park into a single park called Admiral Mason Veterans Memorial Park.

The foundation is set to present its annual report to the Pensacola City Council on Monday, where it will make the proposal.

Rob Doss, president of the Veterans Memorial Park Foundation of Pensacola, told the News Journal that Admiral Mason Park is showing signs of deterioration and could benefit from the stewardship of the veterans' organization.

"I look at it as a rejoining, not as a joining," Doss said. "It's essentially putting it back together again so that under our stewardship, we can make the entire property look like Veterans Memorial Park looks because if you look at it, there's a difference."

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Anyone visiting the parks at Ninth Avenue and Bayfront Parkway might not realize that the city considers them two separate properties, with Admiral Mason Park occupying the western part of the property with a walking trail around a stormwater pond and Veterans Memorial Park occupying the eastern half of the property with numerous veteran memorials including a replica of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Admiral Mason Park, once the site of a 2,000-seat baseball stadium, was split into two parks when the Veterans Memorial Park was created in the 1990s.

Over the last two years, the Veterans Memorial Park Foundation of Pensacola has been at the center of a legal fight over the placement of a temporary bathroom trailer at the park. The city allowed the trailer to be put on the Admiral Mason side of the park.

A group of local residential and commercial property owners formed an organization called Citizens for the Protection of Admiral Mason Park and sued the city and the foundation to have the bathroom trailer removed, alleging the city did not follow its proper planning ordinances and rules when it allowed the trailer.

In its report to City Council, the foundation details the events of the lawsuit from its perspective in four pages of the 12-page report.

The lawsuit was ultimately dropped after all sides agreed to the idea of a permanent restroom facility in the park, and the City Council voted to allow the trailer to remain in the park though it had to be removed periodically while plans were developed to build a permanent building.

The report notes that former Mayor Grover Robinson offered to buy the trailer at one point to remove the foundation from any legal problems, and city officials came to inspect the trailer for purchase as recently as October 2022.

Recently, the trailer was removed from the park, and the foundation said in its report it would likely sell the trailer because of the cost-prohibitive restrictions the city has placed on it.

The city sought funding for the Veterans Memorial Park bathrooms from the state, and the Legislature approved the request, but the funding was vetoed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The city is still continuing to seek funding for the bathroom from the Legislature.

Doss said he is hopeful the funding will come through, as a bathroom at the park has been promised for years.

"Hopefully, the Legislature will come through, and the governor will sign," Doss said. "But if not, we still need to find a way to get this done. It's time. It's beyond time."

Doss said in the last year, the foundation has provided $260,000 worth of value to the maintenance work done at Veterans Memorial Park, allowing the city to spend those dollars on other parks.

Doss said they could provide the same value to Admiral Mason Park.

"That's a discussion a few months down the road, but that's just a thought that we've had," Doss said. "We think it's a pretty good idea."

Admiral Mason Park is named after Vice Admiral Charles Perry Mason who was an aircraft carrier commander during World War II, earning the Navy Cross for his defense of the U.S.S. Hornet in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, and was mayor of Pensacola in the 1950s and early 1960s.

"It seems like a good fit to give him a little more recognition in respect to his military service than a sort of incidental holding pond area," Doss said. "So really, it sounds like a winner to me."

The City Council will hear from the foundation at its agenda conference meeting Monday at 3:30 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola veterans park foundation wants Admiral Mason Park to merge