A Place to Park on Pottstown's South Side

Pollock Park is located between South Street and Cross Street on Pottstown's south side.

More trees or fewer trees?

Keep the soccer field, the tennis courts and the basket ball court? Or get rid of them?

Lights?

A Gazebo?

These are the kinds of questions posed, answered and asked again Monday night during the first attempt at getting input on a concept plan for Pollock Park.

Your faithful blogger arrived 45 minutes late, as you no doubt realized, having read yesterday's post indicating I began the evening in Gilbertsville for a very short Douglass (Mont.) Supervisors meeting.

So forgive me if this report is less-than-complete.

The two-acre park is wedged in between South and Cross streets and is a neighborhood staple, if a little under-used.

In an attempt to change that, and with help from a grant from the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Simone Collins landscape architects met with a group of more than 20 people in the new community meeting room of the Pottstown Regional Public Library Monday night to get their thoughts.

There were a lot of them.

Many said they wanted to find ways to make the park safer, as well as more useful to the neighborhood. They worried about vandalism, but some said they didn't want lights.

Peter Simone, who heads up the landscape architecture firm, said in some parks they have installed motion sensor lights to cut down on vandalism.

There was also discussion of some sort of public art project and Assistant Borough Manager Justin Keller said the borough is currently working on an ordinance to make it easier to paint murals in the borough.

By the time the meeting was over, about 8:30 p.m., the idea board was packed with post-its and Simone said they would use those ideas to put together a draft plan to bring back to the residents.

That will occur on March 21, time and place to be announced.

In the meantime, here are the Tweets.