The city of Colorado Springs has launched a digital survey and open house highlighting community response and future plans for three historic downtown parks.
The plans are focused on Acacia, Antlers and Alamo Square parks, all of which are original to the city's design. The process of evaluating the parks began last year. Connie Schmeisser is a landscape architect for the city.
"We purposely went big on these plans to try to help people see that you can shift historic parks in a sensitive way," she says.
Proposals include moving the winter ice rink at Acacia to the middle of the park, adding a dog park at Antlers and renovating the Gazebo at Alamo Square.
Schmeisser says a timeline for the changes may be far off with the current economic climate, but the goal is still there.
"Hopefully we can use this time to slowly make long-term plans that we can pick up with as we move through COVID. We're pretty optimistic that in time we will want to be back in these parks and hopefully we can bring that to fruition," she says.
$2 million in funding for the changes will come from last year's voter-approved 2B initiative.
Interactive maps with the ideas for each park are available on the city’s website. A survey is available through May 12.
