Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM JANUARY 19 - JANUARY 25, 2022 UCW 13 COVER STORY Fort Bragg opens new park, Arbor Board plants new trees by ALYSON HANSEN ALYSON HANSEN, Staff Writer. COMMENTS? editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910-484-6200. Liberty Park, Fort Bragg's newest park, will open with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Jan. 19 at noon. e 117-acre park is situated on an old sec- tion of Bragg Boulevard that used to be a public thoroughfare that ran through the installa- tion. at part of Bragg Bou- levard was closed off with the opening of the I-295 Murchison Bypass in 2016. "We had a great opportunity to do something with the section of road instead of just leaving it there as an abandoned section. We thought, now that we have this asset and opportunity, what do we do with it?" said Brian Vesely, Directorate of Public Works architect and chief of de- sign and project management. In 2019, the idea of a park for the area began to emerge. After brainstorming and discuss- ing the park concept, that idea morphed into a more ambitious project. Eventually, the parks in Fort Bragg will all be intercon- nected with a trail system called the "Liberty Trail." e eventual 14-mile trail system will loop around historical sites around Fort Bragg, including the Iron Mike statue on Randolph Street and the All-American Chapel on Ardennes Street. Liberty Park is the first phase of that project. Vesely estimates that Fort Bragg will complete Liberty Trail in five-to-six years. Liberty Park touts 2.8 miles of unpaved trails and 3.4 miles of paved paths. In support of Fort Bragg's sustainability mission, the park's paved trails utilize the old asphalt from the section of Bragg Boulevard the park cur- rently sits on. Fort Bragg built benches set up in areas along the paths, with wood milled from trees taken from the park. Along the park's paved trails, visitors will find twenty-five physical fitness stations. e unpaved trails meander through the conifer forest that originally lined Bragg Boulevard. Guests can enjoy walks through the forest and wildflower groves. Four new pavilions have also been built for families to enjoy. Two churches in disrepair are in the park's boundaries and will see facelifts through the coming months. e plans are to trans- form the churches into commu- nity centers. "It's a stretch of road that could have been a blemish. It was left in disrepair," said Col. Scott Pence, Fort Bragg Garrison Commander. "And now the new renovation turns it into a point of beauty that can raise and enhance people's mental health as they interact with it." In addition to creating the park for families to enjoy, designers also had storm resil- iency in mind. Pence explained that designers constructed the park to help safely and mind- fully direct flooding from thun- derstorms and hurricanes. Following the opening cer- emony, volunteers will plant azalea bushes as part of the Fort Bragg Directorate of Public Works Arbor Board mission. Vesely said he is excited about the azaleas and how the park will look in the spring. "I envision it as this amazing bloom of flowers that will draw people to the park. You'll have this amazing ... bloom of hun- dreds of azaleas and hundreds of dogwoods. It will really be a neat event every spring when all these flowers will come out. It will be this sort of beautiful tap- estry all along the park," he said. Vesely is proud of the project and the improvement it repre- sents to Fort Bragg's livability. "It'll be a point of pride for me when I see people out there actually enjoying the park in the way I hoped and envisioned they would enjoy it. I [want to] enhance the quality of life for people on Fort Bragg," said Vesely. Above: Trees have been planted in the old Fort Bragg median as part of the new Liberty Park, on Jan 4. Below: A future park is in progress. Liberty Park is set to open Jan. 19. (Photos by Brian Bird, Fort Bragg Public Affairs.)