City Park master plan: council hears 25‑year concept to rethink fields, circulation and floodplain

Teddy Hall, director of recreation and parks, and design consultant Graham presented a 25‑year master plan for Burlington City Park that aims to improve connectivity, address floodplain and landfill constraints, and reconfigure programming and maintenance facilities.

Graham described the project goals as creating a sense of place, clarifying program locations, enhancing internal pedestrian connections and improving ecological health. He said the team carried out stakeholder meetings, a public open house and a building‑by‑building assessment. The plan identifies that roughly 31% of the park sits in floodplain/floodway areas and that multiple softball fields are located atop a historic landfill that causes ground instability and maintenance challenges.

"If we move that line back 50 feet, we can start to reduce some of the flooding in here by 6 inches," the consultant said when describing conceptual floodplain adjustments. He also showed concept moves including up to 200 additional parking spaces in select locations, a larger community lawn by converting Field 1, an expanded train loop (conceptually up to about 5,000 feet), repurposing the existing carousel building for concessions and a proposed new ticketing hub and gateway to improve wayfinding.

The team proposed removing some active ballfields on the landfill and replacing them with passive greenspace and smaller turf pockets for pickup sports; stakeholders expressed support for reducing maintenance liability and long‑term field upkeep on soft landfill soils but also noted the need to replace youth and adult programming fields elsewhere. New Leaf (a local board partner) has offered partial financial support targeted to the West Woods (the passive wooded area) work, the presenters said.

Phasing is modeled as bite‑sized projects that can be combined in different sequences depending on council priorities; the team intentionally did not preset a formal priority list because council and staff need to choose which components to bundle. The plan also flagged the YMCA site situation — the pool’s condition and possible building disposition — as a decision that could unlock options for administrative relocation, track alignment or expanded pedestrian spine work.

Council discussion emphasized safe access, cost estimates for near‑term actions, and the need to identify replacement fields before removing existing ballfields. Staff intends to bring the plan back on the Oct. 7 council agenda for adoption of the master plan and a phasing discussion. No construction or funding vote occurred at the meeting.