The City of Kenai will apply for grant money to help revamp Old Town Park. That’s after getting city council permission last week to apply for a quarter-of-a-million dollars from the joint state-federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The city has long envisioned giving its Old Town Park a makeover. It sits on the city bluff near the Kenai Fine Arts Center. It’s fenced in, with a swing set, covered picnic shelter and playground equipment geared toward younger kids.
The city is requesting the maximum amount of money – $250,000 – from the program. If it gets that, the city would have to chip in the same amount for the project. The combined half-million dollars won’t be enough to pay for the full project, which the city estimates will cost around $800,000.
Tyler Best is the city’s parks and recreation director. He says the city commissioned a schematic design for the park a few years ago that came out to around $1.6 million. But they’ve scaled the scope back.
“We were going to do this, we were going to do that,” he said. “We were going to add lighting, running water, bathrooms – so we kind of took the list our schematic design had and started cutting stuff out of it.”
Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 1964 with the goal of safeguarding natural areas. In Kenai, the same program paid for the city’s soccer fields.
Bridget Grieme is the city council liaison to Kenai’s Parks and Recreation Commission. She says that group wants the city to apply for the grant and that renovating the park is a longtime city goal.
“There will be a focus on making sure that this park is redesigned in a way that’s cost-effective, but also accessible,” she said. “There’s been a movement in recent years for having increased accessibility in our parks for youth who have different strengths and weaknesses and this park would answer those needs for Kenai.”
Other Kenai parks have gotten upgrades in recent years. Kenai acquired an inclusive seesaw for its municipal park in 2024 and upgraded the playground equipment at the city’s softball greenstrip in 2023. The city is also in the process of crafting a parks-specific master planning document.
