After a two-month sprint, Columbus City Council will consider a plan to replace McCoy Park, which is slated to become a National Women’s Soccer League training facility.
The solution being presented includes three pieces of land the city already owns on the South Side, and more land acquisition is in the works. The report calls for developing a new nine-acre Greenleaf Park, adding an adaptive softball field to Lou Berliner Sports Park and developing about five acres north of McCoy Park into a park with a splash pad, therapeutic recreation building and more.
The plan on Southwest Side parks comes from a council–mandated working group. City Hall officials, neighborhood leaders and representatives of the NWSL team investors had 60 days to map out how the city could replace public amenities previously planned for McCoy Park.
City Council is scheduled to receive a presentation on the report at its June 29 meeting but take no vote related to it.
Southwest Area Commission Chair Liz Reed said residents were deeply hurt when they learned Mayor Andrew Ginther had promised the use of McCoy Park to billionaires Jimmy and Dee Haslam and their co-investors so they could get a National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) franchise. But Reed said she believes the new plan will bring more recreational opportunities to the Southwest Side and Columbus at-large than the old plan for McCoy Park – as long as the city follows through on all of it.
“This working group has turned into an opportunity to recover from the missteps and do something positive for the Southwest community,” Reed said.
Ginther told The Dispatch he’s excited about the plan and thanked the working group members for their hard work.
“As I’ve always said, this is a both-and community,” Ginther said, referring to both bringing an NWSL team here and providing park space.
“This is an incredible way for us to serve more of our neighbors, reach more of our neighbors, increase access to park space and programming and do more than we ever imagined before,” Ginther said.
McCoy Park is currently little more than an open field. But before the NWSL deal, residents had worked with the city for several years on plans to make over the park to serve one of the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods and residents with disabilities.
Previous designs for McCoy Park included adaptive softball and soccer fields, playgrounds, a splash pad, a large retention pond and a therapeutic recreation building. That last item was going to adapt an existing building north of McCoy Park that came to the city by way of the Younkin family to create the Younkin Therapeutic Recreation Center.
Whether the city would go through with building the therapeutic center was uncertain until the NWSL team investors compromised on some of the land the city initially approved for them to use. That small park being developed north of McCoy will also include a playground, pickleball courts, a soccer field and a pond.
The planned Greenleaf Park is near the intersection of Greenleaf and Brown roads and was purchased by Columbus Recreation and Parks in 2023, but it has not yet been developed. Preliminary designs include an accessible playground, basketball court, tennis courts, pond and a perimeter walking trail.
Just as the previous plan for McCoy Park had multiple phases, Reed said these two new parks will be built out in phases with some amenities finished earlier than others.
Some decisions still remain after the working group report. The city is still working on the neighborhood’s water retention problem that was going to be addressed by a retention basin at McCoy Park, according to Reed.
Across Greenleaf and the smaller park at McCoy, the working group’s plan covers less acreage than the approximately 24 acres at McCoy that the city is giving up. The city is in discussions with multiple landowners to purchase more land in the Southwest Side.
“I’m committed not only to make [the acreage] up, but doing more,” Ginther said. “I think we can do more.”
Reed told The Dispatch she wants to believe the mayor and the city will follow through on all the commitments in this report.
“But only actions after this will tell us what will truly happen,” Reed said. “The trust has been broken and now we need to see continued efforts by the mayor’s office moving forward.”
Government and politics reporter Jordan Laird can be reached at jlaird@dispatch.com. Follow her on X, Instagram and Bluesky at @LairdWrites.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: After McCoy Park-NWSL deal, new plan for multiple parks unveiled
Reporting by Jordan Laird, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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By Jordan Laird, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
