Pigeon Point Park turns 2

The 7-acre park on Pigeon Point Road wasn't much of a park three years ago. The infrastructure was failing, the playground equipment no longer met safety codes and the landscaping had been badly neglected.

In 2005, the Beaufort City Council set aside $200,000 for improvements to the park. The money was used to fix the road, parking and sewer and water systems, and it purchased new playground equipment, which was assembled by volunteers from the Pigeon Point Neighborhood Crime Watch group and elsewhere in the city.

The improved park reopened in May 2006 to throngs of children playing on the swings and munching on snacks, and the tradition has continued.

Residents celebrated the park's second "birthday" Saturday, climbing on the playground equipment and eating hamburgers and hot dogs provided by the Beaufort Police Department.

"Our park has become a citywide attraction, as evidenced by the crowds on good weather days," Hugh Folk, co-chairman of the Pigeon Point Neighborhood Crime Watch group said Wednesday. "It's pretty complete. The one thing still needed is some kind of fencing to keep people from running out into the road."

Last month, the city opened a new restroom building in the park, and 13 trees and a variety of shrubs were moved to the park. Parks superintendent Liza Hill agreed that what the park really needs now is a fence.

"It's a potential (concern) because it's less than 30 feet from the playground to Pigeon Point Road," she said Thursday.

Hill has designed a "living fence" for the park, which would cost about $35,000.

"It has brick pillars ... and It's made out of wood and wire, and you plant a vine on it," she said. "What you have when the plant matures is it appears like a living fence."

Hill is waiting to see if the city will allocate money for it in the fiscal year 2009 budget. If the city doesn't pony up for the fence, the neighborhood watch group may purchase the fence.

The group has raised $10,000 so far by offering to engrave names on the bricks in park walkways for $37.50 each. The bricks were originally used in Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park and were salvaged when that park was renovated in 2005 and 2006.

"(Pigeon Point Park) has improved over 100 percent," City Councilwoman Donnie Beer, who lives in the Pigeon Point neighborhood, said Friday. "It's just absolutely amazing how many people have used that park since it's reopened.

"If it's a pretty day, you'll find mothers and children, birthday parties, buses from the Boys & Girls Club and churches. It's fantastic now that they've done such a beautiful job."