Town of Man looking for volunteers to form Guyandotte Waterfront Park board
- Robert Fields
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
MAN The Town of Man is looking for local residents to help form a park board for the town’s ongoing recreational park project on the edge of the nearby river.
Mayor John Fekete says progress has been slow but continuous in the construction of the town’s Guyandotte Waterfront Park. What the town needs at this point, according to Fekete, is a group to help determine how the project should move forward. He said Monday during a town council meeting that there is already an ordinance in place that allows the town to form a park board.
“We are going to be looking for citizens to get involved,” he said. “We can appoint five people, something that I would have to present to the council at the next meeting. So, I would like to put that out there that we’re looking for five people that would like to come and volunteer their time and have one meeting a month to participate in our park board.”
According to the mayor, those five board members would be tasked with putting events together and coming up with recommendations for how the park should operate. Those recommendations would be presented to the town council for final approval.
Mayor Fekete announced the initial plan for the park in August last year. Since then, however, the town has encountered a number of obstacles, ranging from uncertainty in the project’s stream of funding to the presence of a private residence on the property. In February, a $400,000 grant application through the state’s Land and Water Conservation Fund was temporarily put on hold due to the presence of a mobile home on the park property occupied by a long-term resident. In response, town officials offered $2,500 to that resident to help with the cost of moving the home.
The park property is part of an ongoing annexation attempt by the town. Officials have requested a minor boundary adjustment through the Logan County Commission, which includes properties along the Guyandotte and branching Huff Creek as well as the Guyandotte Waterfront Park property. A public hearing on that annexation is scheduled for 4:30pm on June 16 at the County Commission office in Logan.
Meanwhile, another funding source for the waterfront park could have come from federal dollars. The town had cosigned with the City of Logan and the Hatfield McCoy Convention and Visitors Bureau to apply for $500,000 in directed congressional spending. However, following a temporary halt of federal grant funding by the current administration, that application had to be resubmitted.
According to plans submitted by Thrasher Engineering, the three-acre park will include an updated parking lot, courts for basketball and pickleball, community pavilions and a stage. The park is also planned to feature handicapped accessible playground equipment, a boat ramp for kayaks, and fishing docks along the Guyandotte River.
PHOTO | Robert Fields