Blue River Park
Rebuilding & Reimagining a Community Space.
**Please note: At this time, the park remains indefinitely closed**
However, significant progress has been made in this complex process.
For many months the Blue River Park Board has been liaising with multiple agencies to save as many trees as possible while working towards making the park safe again and ensuring we have the best possible setup for rebuilding it back better.
When we first started assessing the destruction caused by the Holiday Farm Fire, it looked at times like the park would need to be clear-cut. Yet after much careful consultation with multiple agencies, and assessment by various experts, we were able to save around 30-40 trees, so it is not a total clear cut.
ODOT and Suulutaaq began the clean-up in early May, and most of the hazard trees have now been taken down. This process will continue for another week, and, when the debris clean-up phase will begin.
Due to the extensive fire damage, the old shed, baseball backstop, and fireplace will need to be removed. But there is also good news in that the park received a FEMA grant to replace the backstop, repair the shelter roof and replace all of the signs in the park. This work will begin once all the debris is cleared.
ODOT and Suulutaaq have also generously agreed to grind the tree stumps for us, as removing those stumps would disturb the soil and potentially cause long delays to the whole process.
The Park is welcoming donations towards the regeneration project so Click the Yellow PayPal Donate Button in the blue banner below if you are able to support us as we rebuild and redesign this important community space.
Donate to Help Rebuild the Blue River Park!
Environmental Work
The park is also working with an environmental group, Mason, Bruce & Girard, to protect and enhance its riparian area and create habitat for wildlife within the park.
Pure Water Partners, through a grant from EWEB, and in conjunction with the McKenzie Watershed Council, will be re-planting the riparian area around the park. The replanting will take place in the fall, since doing this in the spring (with the prospect of a dry and hot summer) would greatly jeopardize the survival of the trees, since we don’t have facilities to irrigate the saplings. When the time comes for replanting, we will be putting the call out for volunteers to help us make our park green and beautiful again.
All the many stakeholders involved in this extremely challenging and complex project – ODOT, Suulutaaq, Pure Water Partners, FEMA, Mason, Bruce & Girard, EWEB and others, have all done an outstanding job and been extremely helpful in supporting us every step of the way. We are all very grateful not only for their assistance, and financial support, but also for their genuine empathy and commitment to helping our community recover and rebuild.
The park is definitely going to have a very different look once this process is finished, but we hope that by the time we welcome you back it will also be a much better place for locals and visitors alike. We will share ideas going forward and will give everyone a chance to have a say in what the vision for the new Blue River Park will look like. Watch this space!
