Berry Creek Park Opens on May 3

Families and kids in Georgetown have a new place for hanging around, literally.

At a new park in the Berry Creek neighborhood, kids will find many ways to hang on, pull up, climb, spin, and swing on two playgrounds. An opening celebration for Berry Creek Park will be held on Saturday, May 3 at 10 am. The public is invited.

One playground is filled with walls and ladders for climbing, rings and bars for hanging on, and suspended wheels for spinning (photo at right). The 2.7-acre park has a second shade-covered playground for smaller kids with slides and a multi-leveled play structure. A swing set is nearby. Picnic tables and benches provide shady spots out of the summer sun.

There’s also a big rotating umbrella called a Sky Runner where kids can grab on and spin. (See photo below.)

The park could also become a favorite spot for pickup basketball games on the junior-sized court with two hoops.

In developing the park, hundreds of live oaks and other shade trees were preserved. “We tried to nestle it in the shade as much as possible,” says Kimberly Garrett, parks and recreation director for the city. Much of the park was left in its natural state with native limestone, grasses, and wildflowers under a canopy of live oaks and other trees.

City parks staff spent several months designing the layout of the park, clearing brush, doing cement work, building a trail, and installing equipment. The budget to develop the park was $120,000.

“Berry Creek Park provides children in the Berry Creek and Serenada neighborhoods a safe play environment with a wide variety of play equipment,” says Garrett.

Berry Creek Park is the first city park in that neighborhood. Since the first subdivisions in Berry Creek were developed outside City Limits, there were no parkland dedication requirements. The new park is in the Reserve of Berry Creek, a section of the development in which homes are still being constructed.

The entrance to Berry Creek Park is at 1100 Shinnecock Hills Drive, which is 50 yards west of the intersection with Luna Trail. For more information, contact the Georgetown Parks and Recreation Department at (512) 930-3595 or at parks@georgetowntx.org.

See more photos of Berry Creek Park at http://galleries.georgetown.org/in-the-news/berry-creek-park/