Highland Park to get mini golf course, sewer work to disrupt Foster Park

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The City of Kokomo’s 2025 budget will receive final consideration from the Kokomo Common Council this month. At a price tag of $125 million, taxpayers want to be assured that their dollars are being spent wisely.

There are plenty of planned expenditures for the council to review, but the Kokomo Lantern met with Mayor Tyler Moore recently to discuss some of the budget highlights. This is the second in a series of stories on the matter, focusing on infrastructure and facility improvements.

The Kokomo Parks and Recreation Department will receive major changes to the park system in 2025; one of which should be appreciated almost immediately, and one which promises a year or more of headaches.

First, the good stuff. Highland Park, the grand dame of Kokomo’s park system, is scheduled for a major new addition to its offerings. For the past three years, neighborhood baseball diamonds have been abandoned in the city’s parks in favor of the Championship Park baseball and softball complex on the city’s far east side.

Those fallow fields are receiving new life. Northside Park now features a pump track for bicycles, scooters, and skateboards, which went fully live last year. And in 2025, Highland Park will surrender the land once occupied by Southside Little League for a miniature golf course.

“There has been talk within the parks department considering a miniature golf course somewhere,” said Moore. “Their initial plans were down by the cabin in Foster Park, but as we continue to look at reusing and repurposing the Little League parks, we looked at Southside.”

Highland Park prevailed as the selected site, and the former ballfield will host putters next summer. Moore explained that the project will have a partner. The city communicated with Bridges Outreach, and the organization agreed to operate the golf course.

“As much as Bridges is involved with the Frozen Sandlot, they saw the opportunity to provide employment opportunities for a lot of their students and an additional fundraising opportunity to sustain not the program.”

Moore explained that Bridges didn’t come to the table empty-handed. It secured a grant from the Community Foundation of Howard County to help underwrite the project, and the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Kokomo also agreed to invest. The partnership assured that the miniature golf course will be a reality.

One park alteration that won’t be particularly welcome in the short term involves Foster Park. As the city’s multi-million-dollar storm sewer upgrade continues to work its way along the Wildcat Creek from City Hall to the wastewater treatment plant, the construction will heavily disrupt Foster Park and completely eliminate portions of the Walk of Excellence trail system temporarily.

“It's slated to start next year,” said Moore. “That's not going to be a fun project to work through.”

The earliest stages of the project, which involves installing a major storm sewer line that runs along the north bank of the Wildcat until it reaches Markland Avenue, already has caused major disruptions in downtown. Union Street was closed all summer from the creek to Superior Street, and Superior is still under the knife.

Residents should expect similar disruptions as the project moves west, Moore explained, especially on the trail system.

“I'm not sure how long it will take, but knowing that there is the potential for delays, it'd be nice to wait and start the project after the Haynes-Apperson Festival,” said Moore. “If they do the construction in waves, they can get in, disturb and replace, and then move on or complete it later.

“Hopefully, it will be contained within a single calendar year or just a matter of months.”

One of the simpler changes, but one that will be noticed by anyone visiting City Hall will be a change to the building’s front entrance. According to Moore, the entryway will be radically altered by removing the revolving doors in favor of a vestibule and a security system to limit after-hours access to the facility.

“We’ll create a vestibule, a space similar to the east door, where you come in through the one set of doors, and there's the common area, and then the main doors into city hall,” said Moore. “We’re going to get rid of the revolving doors because they haven't been energy efficient.

“Once the revolving doors are removed, we can hopefully provide an additional sense of security if we need to lock the inside doors. Part of the plan is to include an intercom system so if the front doors to City Hall are locked, people can still communicate if they're coming in after hours and need to meet with a police officer or get a report.”

Additionally, Moore floated the possibility of a pass card system so that employees can access the building without assistance. The design and features of the entryway are not finalized.