Photo by Kamp Fender
A hiker checks out the Moss Rock Preserve in Hoover, Alabama, in November 2018.
The Hoover City Council has hired a North Carolina-based company to do an inventory of recreational facilities in the city and help the city craft a strategic plan for improving those amenities, expanding them or adding to them with amenities in new locations.
That study, being done by LandDesign, is costing $239,000 and is being funded in part by a $50,000 donation from Signature Homes, which suggested the inventory be done.
LandDesign will hold town hall meetings to seek public input and is holding listening sessions and meetings with the Hoover Parks and Recreation Department, Hoover Parks and Recreation Board, recreational leagues in the city and other community stakeholders..
Public meetings should start in the first quarter of 2023, and the goal is to have a final plan in place by early fall of 2023, City Administrator Allan Rice said.
There already were talks about doing such a study for the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, but this will expand that effort to include the whole city, Rice said. The city won’t be able to do everything in the plan at one time, but it will help establish priorities, he said.
In other recreation news, the City Council approved final documents to pay $58,675 toward construction of a fitness court at Veterans Park as part of a joint project with Shelby County and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama.
The total cost of the fitness court will be $167,350, with Blue Cross providing a $50,000 grant and Hoover and Shelby County each paying $58,675, Parks and Recreation Director Erin Colbaugh said. The fitness court will be a 40-by-40-foot pad with full-body workout stations, City Planner Mac Martin said. Sample drawings provided to the Hoover zoning board showed workout stations designed for core exercises, squats, pushups, lunges, pullups, agility movements and bends.
