Pickleball, exercise stations top list of Waterleigh park desires

Orange County Parks and Recreation, along with newly reelected District 1 Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson, hosted residents of the Waterleigh community at Water Spring Middle School to update and discuss the features of a new community park coming to the area. 

At the Nov. 12 meeting, members of the Parks and Recreation staff revealed the results of a community survey — which aimed to delineate what amenities the community felt should be prioritized — provided an update on the park’s design and allowed members of the community to further engage with development of the park, which will be located southeast of the intersection of Water Spring Boulevard and Point Rock Drive.

“I love these community parks, because (they are) neighborhood-focused, which means whatever goes there is driven by the neighborhood,” Wilson said. “You saw the survey results during the meeting, and that’s really what this meeting was specifically called for, to share those results with the community and get some more feedback. From here, the project will continue to evolve as our team receives feedback, but it’s largely something that the community gets to decide. They get to tell us what’s important to them, and then we spend the money we have budgeted for this on what the community wants.”

Photo by Sam Albuquerque

The overall budget for the Waterleigh Park South project is $1.8 million — with more than $920,000 allocated for the specific amenities the community responded to in the park survey. 

According to survey results, the top amenities that will be part of this project are a shaded playground, multi-use pickleball and tennis courts, and exercise stations. 

“The community, in the survey results, told us that they wanted pickleball, so there’ll be some pickleball and tennis coming,” Wilson said. “It looks like there’s going to be a beautiful playground that’ll have lots of shade and a walking path. … That’s the cool thing about these projects: when we put these surveys out, the residents get to tell us what they want. And we try really hard to make sure when the Parks department sends the surveys out that we reach as many people as possible so that everyone in the community has an opportunity to weigh in. We’ve even had situations like at the other Waterleigh Park, where they were worried they didn’t get enough results, so we did the survey again. The idea is that the residents drive the conversation about what’s going to go there, right? This is their park; I’m just a conduit trying to make sure they’re getting what they want here.” 

According to Wilson, the park’s construction completion date is in 2028. Until then, Wilson and the Parks and Recreation Department plan to host more community meetings as the park plans develop.