Special to the Enquirer
An artist rendering show the new pocket park that will be built in a vacant lot between Railroad and Sparkman streets in downtown Hartselle.

By Rebekah Martin rebekah.martin@hartselleenquirer.com

The vacant lot between Railroad and Sparkman streets will soon be converted into a pocket park, funded by a $50K grant from the Alabama Resource Conservation Council.State Sen. Arthur Orr helped city officials in locating the grant and completing the application process.

The lot, which was purchased by the city for $14K, is located at 116 Main St. W. and measures 28 feet by 100 feet.
Mayor Randy Garrison said the pocket park will act as a thoroughfare from Main Street to the Hartselle Farmer’s Market.

“My long-term goal is to have a greenspace from the farmer’s market to downtown so traffic will flow in both directions,” Garrison said. “People downtown can walk over to the farmer’s market, and you can have events at the farmer’s market, and people can walk downtown.”

Garrison said the lot is on a floodplain, making it impossible for a building to be constructed there.
Swings, playground equipment, benches and pavilions are planned for the project to create a welcoming space for families. The city will contribute an additional $25K to the project that will cost approximately $80K in total.

Online response to the new project has overall been positive. “The new pocket park coming to Downtown Hartselle is just one more in a long line of things our city leaders are doing to make Hartselle an excellent place to live,” John Griffith wrote on a post on Facebook. Many others chimed in with additional praise. “Pocket parks are all the rage in big cities where space is limited,” John Eric Burnum added. “In the 1970s, my grandmother lived in Montgomery, and she had a little one-acre pocket park right behind her house for the whole neighborhood. (It) had a swing set, slide and basketball goal.”

Garrison said the timeline for completion is unclear, but the city’s next step is to hire a landscape architect, who will draw up plans.