Upper Arlington's parks staff and design consultants presented an updated Burke Park master plan on June 16 that would relocate the park maintenance area, expand accessible play and nature spaces, add court capacity for tennis and pickleball, increase parking and construct a four-season shelter with year-round restrooms.

"This particular location allows us to move the maintenance area out of the center of the park into an area more easily secured and hidden by a combination of fences, the existing evergreen hedges along, Wickliffe and Coyoacan, and the woods to the west," Park Development and Arts Superintendent Jeff Anderson said as he described the maintenance-yard relocation that frees central park space for expanded amenities.

Consultant architect Nick Estillo of Myers and Associates described the proposed four-season shelter as a centrally located pavilion with a gathering space sized to support summer day camps and small community events, support spaces including restrooms and mechanical areas, and extensive glazing to bring park views into the building. The plan keeps the playground in its current footprint but adds ramped and ground-level play for improved accessibility, more climbing features, rubberized surfacing and additional swings. The nature play area would expand south and west, adding a pollinator meadow and stormwater-integrated play elements.

Staff presented a revised parking approach that increases on-site spaces from 42 to 88, reorients the lot for better direct access to courts and the shelter, and realigns the entry drive to improve pedestrian crossings. Anderson said the additional parking is a direct response to resident comments about on-street parking pressure and the need to improve access and safety.

On courts, the plan proposes expanding the hard-court area to three full-size tennis courts and four pickleball courts, with a practice wall between them to help mitigate sound. Anderson said Central Ohio's strong community interest in both active recreation and naturalized park space guided layout decisions and that the design team deliberately worked around existing mature trees to preserve the park's green character.

Costs and schedule: Anderson said the current Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) includes about $7 million for the project across multiple phases. He cautioned that two elements added back into the updated plan'expanded parking and drainage work on multipurpose fields'require further study and could increase cost beyond that budget. The project schedule presented calls for advertising the maintenance-yard construction by the end of the year so work can begin early next year; detailed park design would follow, with major park construction anticipated to start in 2027.

Council and staff discussed playground aesthetics, parking balance between east and west sides of the park, athletic-field drainage, nature-preservation priorities, and whether the maintenance yard should be located somewhere outside the park. Anderson said relocation within the acquired Hanley property keeps the maintenance footprint similar in size but better shielded from neighbors and closer to park utilities. He also confirmed the design intent to use native plantings for pollinator meadows and new tree plantings.

Multiple council members praised the public engagement process and the design iteration since last fall; staff said the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board (PRAB) generally supported the updated plan and that public outreach will continue during final design for detailed elements such as playground palette and seat types. Anderson said staff will return to council in the fall with a final master plan and phasing recommendation and noted that construction phasing aims to avoid the multi-year, six-stage approach used on another park.

Schedule and next steps include formal presentation to council for a motion of support in the fall, bidding the maintenance-yard contract by year-end, detailed design in early 2026 and phased construction beginning in 2027. Staff flagged parking and field drainage as the elements most likely to affect the current CIP budget estimate and said further cost study is underway.