The Thompson Falls Beautification Committee held an open house at the Library Annex in Thompson Falls on Tuesday, Jan. 4 as a way to obtain community feedback for their plans for improving the Rose Garden Park. The committee has been looking at ways to make the Rose Garden Park more attractive, safe, and family friendly, according to organizer Jennifer Fielder.

“Over a year ago, I helped them develop a long-term vision of the site,” Fielder said.” For this past year, we’ve taken that vision out to the community to get feedback on it. This open house on Tuesday was one of those meetings.”

The event was open to the general public, and offered a forum for citizens to come and express support or concerns. Many of the earlier meetings on the subject were with local entities, like the Chamber of Commerce, the Historical Society, the Woman’s Club, according to Fielder.

“This one was open to just anybody who wanted to come in and comment,” said Fielder.

Fielder stated that the event was well attended, and considers it a big success in the terms of gathering the feedback on the project, as well as finding the positives and negatives that people are seeing.

Fielder and the rest of the committee will be taking the information they gathered under consideration, and will be sorting through the most important things that they feel need to be adjusted and modified on the long-term plan for the site.

“I think in the end, we’re going to have a much better plan, having gone out to the community for suggestions and concerns from people who are really familiar with the community,” Fielder said.

Fielder said that the responses at the open house were fairly varied, and spanned a wide spectrum in terms of approval of the project.

“We had a mix of people who loved the entire project and said don’t change a thing,” Fielder said, “and we had folks that were favoring just leaving the park empty and not doing anything with it. It was quite a gamut.”

One of the issues that was at the forefront of discussion at the open house was public safety, an issue that the committee has given great consideration to from the beginning, but will continue to emphasize as the plan is revised.

For the committee, the immediate project at hand is to replace the antiquated playground. The playground that previously stood at the site was around 60 years old, and was in a state of complete disrepair. According to Fielder, it failed all of the playground safety requirements for public playgrounds, mainly because it was built before playground safety standards existed. The city realized that it was in the best interest of the public to remove it, which occurred last May.

“It was hazardous,” Fielder said. “If an accident were to have happened on something like that that was in violation of safety standards, the impending lawsuit would have been unwinnable.”

The committee decided to look at replacing that playground first and foremost. The project is an all-volunteer effort. The city would not be asked to finance the construction of the playground at this point, but after it is completed, would own it and maintain it.

The committee also displayed plans for the rest of the park at the open house.

The playground is one of the components that fit into that site, which would include an outdoor stage for lectures, skits, and performances, as well as park benches and picnic tables.

Fielder feels that the park is due for some improvements.

“There’s really very limited picnicking and seating in the park now,” Fielder said. “Basically, the main feature of the park as it is now is a parking lot.”

The improvements, including the playground, would all be built with a specific theme in mind, which would be what Fielder described as an architectural style from the David Thompson era, from the late 1700s to the early 1800s.

“This means it would include hand-hewn logs, natural stone, the type of resources we have readily available here,” Fielder said.

Fielder feels that the insight gained from the open house will be invaluable to the project moving forward, but will take some distilling.

“You have to sift through the valid concerns from the rumors, and the real issues from the perceived issues,” Fielder said. “What we do with that feedback is we listen carefully, and we don’t discount anything until we’ve given it full consideration.”

According to Fielder, the committee went out of its way to invite people who are known to be adversarial to the project, because they wanted to bring them in and hear what about the project bothers them, and what suggestions they had to offer.

“We probably won’t ever get 100 percent of the people to agree, but if we get 98 percent, that’s our goal,” Fielder said, “and I think we’re getting there.”

On last Monday evening Thompson Falls City Council approved of the playground equipment recommended for Rose Garden Park by the Fort Thompson Playground Committee. The committee can now officially dig into site details, grant writing, and fund raising. The group hopes to complete the playground this year.

The group will kick off its fund raising with a dinner event that will be held at the Elks Lodge this Friday night, Jan. 14. The event will include a chili feed dinner and entertainment and a bake sale for dessert. Plans for the new playground and the long-term vision for the Rose Park and a possible visitor center will be on display.