Wilmington plans for future while tapping into Greenfield Park's past

With one eye set to the past, Wilmington is developing a master plan to guide the future of Greenfield Park -- one of the city's largest and most historic public recreation areas.

The planning process, which began earlier this year, is nearing the end of its public comment period. Residents can submit input on improvements they want to see and other feedback in an online survey that concludes June 30.

That information will be given to McAdams, a consulting group selected by the city to produce the master plan. McAdams is the same firm working to update a separate master plan for the city's entire parks and recreation department.

Wilmington is working on planning for Greenfield Park's future now because of its unique and underappreciated history, said Sam Lee, the plan's project manager and landscape supervisor with the city of Wilmington

“We felt like the size of the park and what it is to the city deserved its own master plan,” he said.

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At more than 195 acres, Greenfield Park is by far the largest city-owned recreation area. It has its own lake that at least a few alligators and countless turtles call home. The park also features a five-mile-long paved pedestrian loop, its own amphitheater and several observation platforms that jut out into the lake.

But the park has changed over the years.

Greenfield Lake began as a network of creeks at a rice plantation called Greenfields. Samuel Green developed the plantation starting around 1730.

In 1912, trolley lines were extended to Greenfield Lake, which drew more visitors to the area. It became a popular swimming hole and the site of a bandstand and a gazebo, according to archives.

It was purchased by the city in 1925 and saw its heyday between 1925 and 1965, according to Lee.

That park was much different than the one seen today. At one time, Greenfield Park was home to an amusement park, complete with a small roller coaster, and a zoo with a miniature train that ran through the area.

The train was removed from the park in 1975 and the zoo shut down around 1980, according to StarNews archives.

“Over time, park use and growth in the city were in other directions," Lee said. "We’re very interested in this park becoming what it should be for the people in Wilmington.”

In recent years, the park has become a haven for what Lee calls non-traditional park users, including the homeless who sometimes sleep underneath the park's picnic shelters.

That trend, among other changes, has altered park dynamics and discouraged some of the daycare groups and families that once visited the park from coming, Lee said.

“We’re kind of losing Greenfield park,” he said. “When you have a lot of displaced persons in the park then you lose a lot of your traditional users.”

Lee said he hopes the new master plan will be more "family oriented." Throughout the planning process Lee has met several times with McAdams representatives, driving and bicycling around Greenfield Lake with them.

Discussions from those meetings along with public input from the survey and a May public meeting will shape the master plan that's developed. Lee said he hopes to get a draft of the plan this summer. That plan will be considered by city staff before being presented to the Wilmington City Council.

Throughout the process, the city has tried to include the history of the park by asking residents to share memories and historic photos even as they plan for the future.

“We want to bring the park back to the kind of attraction it needs to be,” Lee said.

Reporter Emma Dill can be reached at 910-343-2096 or edill@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Wilmington's Greenfield Park could see changes with new master plan