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Fort Wayne Park Board Creates Memorial Park Task Force

Lisa Ryan, WBOI News
Tree canopy replacement at Memorial PArk will be one of the topics the task force researches.

Fort Wayne’s Board of Park Commissioners created a task force to look at upgrades for Memorial Park. The committee was created in the wake of a failed proposal to lease some of Memorial Park to Indiana Tech.

The private university had wanted to build a track in the public park, but they dropped the proposal after many vocal groups, including veterans and historic preservation activists, expressed opposition to the plan.

Park Board President Rick Samek says Indiana Tech’s Memorial Park proposal started out as a controversial issue, but he thinks the new proposal will be positive.

“This whole controversy I think has brought Memorial Park to the forefront of our mind, and I think the public’s mind, and we’ve created a task force that is going to look into all aspects of that park, with the mind of how do we improve it going forward,” Samek said.

The task force will look at monument restorations, upgrading the landscape, and maintaining the park as it turns 100 years old. The task force will include representatives from both a veterans’ organization and a historic preservation group, along with a City Council member who represents that district.

It will create recommendations based on the historical significance of the park, and those ideas will be presented at the end of the year.

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