| By
Alicia Beard
The Daily Reporter-Herald
Park
planners are designing the Loveland Sport Park
to transport visitors from a day on the farm to
the land of Oz.
Parents and children will encounter a historic
windmill and hay bales at the entrance. Further
in, the artistic theme will lend itself to Wizard
of Oz imagery.
Janet
Meisel-Burns, Loveland senior parks planner, said
it will resemble Dorothy’s journey. “She
leaves Kansas, and when she wakes up, she’s
in a whole different land,” Meisel-Burns
said.
Construction
is nearly complete at the 76-acre sports park,
southeast of Mountain View High School. The $9.7
million activity center will open this summer.
And while the eight fields, two basketball courts,
two in-line hockey rinks and skate park are done,
the playground with water features and two sand
volleyball courts are still under construction.
Park
planners presented their vision of the park to
the Visual Arts Commission last week. James Baldwin,
commission chairman, said he liked the direction
they were going. “I think the concept is
really appealing and imaginative,” he said.
David
Kasprzak, a Loveland parks planner, said in the
playground, roads, possibly yellow brick ones,
will radiate out from a central sculpture to various
pieces of playground equipment. He said he found
the inspiration for the the layout from an excerpt
out of one of L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of
Oz books.
The
playground centerpiece, where all the roads lead,
is under contract with Tim Upham, a Fort Collins
sculptor and design consultant for the project.
Upham
said his piece, which he is currently drafting,
will embody the connection between agrarian features
and the dynamic energy of a sports park.
His
stainless steel sculpture will stand more than
30 feet tall and feature a cyclone, similar to
Dorothy’s tornado, engulfing a windmill.
At
the top, an aluminum mesh cloud with sport ball
outlines will hang over the swirling, twisted
metal. The cyclone comes from the Art in Public
Places program, which earmarks 1 percent of all
city capital project budgets toward art.
Meisel-Burns
said the agrarian theme will dominate throughout
the rest of the park. Besides the windmill, there
will be a cherry orchard, cupolas on top of buildings
and roofs with a rusty, metal barn look.
“We
just felt it was important to celebrate the history
of that land,” she said.
Even
the playground pieces resemble farm equipment,
she added.
Although
Loveland has a lot of playgrounds, Meisel-Burns
said the new sport park is in a league of its
own. “I want a wow factor, I want kids to
say ‘Can we go to this playground?’”
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