NEW TAMPA — When residents were asked what they wanted in a nearly 60-acre park planned for K-Bar Ranch, their answers leaned heavily toward nature.
Walking trails. Trees. Open spaces. Places to relax. Shade.
And not so much a dog park.
That was the message from nearly 50 residents who attended an Oct. 15 meeting at the new Cross Creek Recreation Center to help shape the city’s newest park, an $8 million project still in its earliest planning stages.
“This is a very, very historic park,” Tampa City Councilmember Luis Viera told residents. “The reason we’re here is because we want to do this thing the right way.”
The city has hired Skanska Construction as the design-builder, but no formal plans have been drawn. Instead, residents were put to work and asked to use their phones to rank potential amenities and identify their biggest concerns.
The results revealed a clear preference for nature and passive recreation.
Asked what brings you to a park, the top two answers were being outdoors in nature and passive leisure activities in a park, like walking and bird watching.
When it came to ranking their park elements by priority, walking/jogging paths and nature areas were 1-2, followed by picnic areas and flexible green space.
A dog park ranked last.
Given the property’s history, the results were interesting. At one point, Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa planned to develop the site together. The county favored a revenue-generating sports complex before eventually abandoning the partnership, leaving the city to move forward on its own.
Residents seem to be clearly siding with the more passive park approach.
The site, south of Mistflower Lane near the Pasco County line, once served as a burrow pit during construction of the surrounding neighborhoods. It is a wide-open, mostly flat piece of land.
However, the city planted about 6,800 trees (mostly pine saplings) last December and added another 3,500 oak saplings earlier this month along the park’s southern edge.
While most residents at the meeting favored passive activities, there were some requests for court sports like volleyball, tennis and pickleball.
And then there’s cricket.
Viera was approached at one of his townhalls nearly a decade ago — long before the K-Bar Ranch park was even being considered — by cricket advocate Nagesh Nayak, who was seeking a place to play in New Tampa. The council member has worked to accommodate Nayak and the large Indian community in New Tampa, and as K-Bar Ranch park emerged as a project, so did putting a cricket field in the space.
A large multi-purpose field has been proposed, which could be used for cricket. At one point, Nayak and others envisioned a cricket field with stands and concessions and tournaments that they said would attract thousands of rabid fans.
“I was young then … it was like 10 years back, right,?” Nayak said, laughing. “So the spirits were high. Now it’s like, yeah, it’s okay. We will take whatever we can get.”
Some of the concerns raised by participants included concerns about the park’s effect on nearby homes.
Topics included parking on neighborhood streets, light pollution, noise, security and buffering where homes back up to the site. Increased traffic was the top concern, followed by safety and noise.
Ted Fowler, the city’s director of Parks and Recreation, said those concerns will help shape preliminary designs that will be presented at a second public meeting.
“That’s why this process is so important, because all of that will be fleshed out for meeting No. 2,” he said. “We’ll come back (with designs) and they’ll say, ‘Oh man, y’all nailed it,’ or they come back and say, ‘We know we said that, but we didn’t know that’s what it was going to look like.”
Fowler emphasized that the city would not dictate which amenities residents should favor. How many of the requested amenities make the final design cut will ultimately depend on the budget. The City Council approved $8 million in funding in July.
“We’re just providing the funding, and we’ll maintain it afterwards,” Fowler said.
Viera, whose term in the city council ends Nov. 2, won’t be around by the time the park is completed, but said he was glad he was able to lead the push to begin the process.
Nader Sinno, project executive for Skanska, estimated the design process will take roughly 10 to 12 months.
“We won’t be able to provide everything,” he said, “but hopefully you’ll see that we’ll really take in consideration what you guys have liked.”
For more information about K-Bar Park, visit the project page at https://www.tampa.gov/k-barpark.