Backstrom Park expected to open soon

The story

In 2013, plans began to coalesce for the creation of the first park owned by Lamar County.

The proposed park, which would cover about 3 acres between Oak Grove Optimist Park and Hegwood Road, would become the first under the county’s patronage.

“We have some smaller parks in the county, but they are city-owned,” said District 4 Supervisor Phillip Carlisle, who spearheaded the effort.

The $400,000 project received the support of Southern District Transportation Commissioner Tom King, and with his help, the county secured a $300,000 Transportation Alternative Programs grant from the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

The MDOT grant was applicable because plans call for a 10-foot-wide, concrete walking path that winds over about ¹/₃ mile. Plans also call for a raised, wooden boardwalk running about 120 feet through woods and wetlands on the eastern edge of the park.

A decorative fence would run along the eastern edge of the park along Hegwood.

Neel-Schaffer Inc. was selected by the county to design and draw plans for the park.

The county received a $9,000 Dr Pepper Snapple KaBoom Grant to buy playground equipment, and a grassroots organization, called Lamar County Park Partners, took over fundraising and collected more than $100,000 for what has become J’s Place.

What happened?

Construction for the rest of the park had been bid, and work was supposed to have begun in fall 2014.

But a paperwork glitch voided a $330,000 bid awarded in June to Walker Construction in Wiggins, and required the county to rebid the project.

In early December, supervisors approved a $345,180 bid for construction from Floore Industrial Contractors Inc. of Moss Point.

Later in the month, supervisors surprised their colleague Mike Backstrom, announcing that the park would bear the name of the longtime District 1 supervisor. Backstrom had announced earlier in the year that he would not seek a seventh term on the board.

J’s Place opened in late 2014, but during a meeting in late February, it was decided that the playground would have to be closed while construction and landscaping got underway.

Construction began March 16.

What’s next?

Officials are circling Labor Day on their calendar for the park’s official grand opening, though it could be signed off on prior to that.

“What we’d kind of like to shoot for is a Labor Day ribbon cutting, which is not to say that it may not be open before that,” Carlisle said. “I think that’s a very safe guesstimate.”

Barring unforeseen weather delays, Neel-Schaffer Vice President Michael Essary said construction on the American with Disabilities Act-accessible park should be completed this week.

“(FIC project manager Doug Parten) has made tremendous progress over the past month,” Essary said. “And his completion date, unless it comes raining, would be Aug. 7.”

Grass, both sodded and hydroseeded, was to be done over the past weekend, and Essary said Parten intended to tend to the watering over the next few weeks.

The boardwalk was expected to be completed no later than early this week, the fencing to finish by week’s end.

Carlisle said a bathroom facility also has been added to the park project, saving a long walk to the current restrooms located at the center of the Optimist Park facility.

Essary said wooded areas also were spruced and tidied, like a barber grooming a mop of unruly hair.

“If you haven’t been out there, we’ve cleared underneath the trees for safety, and it looks great,” Essary said. “It’s shady, so if you’re walking, it’s probably 20 degrees cooler than at the ball fields.

“It really looks good.”

Though incomplete, Carlisle said Backstrom Park earned rave reviews from visitors during a recent youth baseball tournament that drew about 20 teams from six different states.

“I was talking to the regional director, and he was just going on and on, first about the (ball fields),” Carlisle said. “He said he’d been coming to our park for a number of years and said that the turnaround at that park had just been enormous and he promised me, ‘I’m going to book your park up.’

“But he also said, ‘That family park, that really, really helps,’ so it’s going to be a great venue, just added to the ball fields that we already have.”