City Council on Tuesday voted to begin negotiations with the schools over nearly 14 acres of the former Bayside 6th Grade Campus that could lead to a long-sought park for Aragona Village.
Officials will work out details for the schools to transfer property along Jericho Road to the city. Issues include dividing the property to carve out the park and removing a building.
City and school division leaders want to turn the land into a park for one of the city's largest neighborhoods, which doesn’t have its own.
The parks department considers it “in a high-needs location without reasonable access to a public park space,” according to the city.
The community has a small park without equipment and a playground that is leased from a church. Lorraine Samko, president of the civic league, said nearly a decade ago they learned the land might become multifamily housing.
“The first hope is that, of course, is it will not be developed with incompatible projects to our neighborhood that already has nearly 3,000 homes in it,” she said during an interview.
Samko said the community wants an open space park with passive and active elements.
“It would have some, hopefully, open space for soccer fields and give families a place where they can go out and have a picnic,” she said. “They can play in the park with their kids, hopefully with their pets and also some facilities. And our real hope is that we can have an adaptive place out there, not only for people who have special needs, as well as our senior population.”
In August, the School Board voted unanimously to start negotiations and members stressed their intent was for the property to only be used for a park.
School Board Chairperson Kathleen Brown watched the council vote Tuesday at City Hall, and Vice Mayor Rosemary Wilson invited her to the podium to speak.
Brown said the property had been donated by the Aragona family and Wilson said the council plans to soon honor John Aragona for the gift.
“The Aragona community has long advocated for open space or a park, and I think that the community is going to be very happy to have this,” Brown said in an interview after the vote.
