CORAL SPRINGS — With more than 35 percent of the city’s population being under the age of 18, city officials have designed the new Fern Glen Park as both a recreational and educational facility.
Armed with more than $400,000 in public money, the city has designed the park as not only a playground, but also a nature center to teach both children and adults about the slowly disappearing natural habitat of Coral Springs.
City spokesman Jack Gardner said the park is situated in one of the city’s fastest-growing areas, which currently does not have much park land.
“It’s like a neighborhood park,” Gardner said. “We’ve got so many kids and they need something to do. Parks and recreation is a big business in Coral Springs.”
About five acres of the 18-acre park, which is near the intersection of Wiles Road and Northwest 66th Terrace, will open this Saturday during a short ceremony that will be followed by a day of activities.
City parks and recreation coordinator Keith Moale said the 5-acre section will contain a basketball court, running track, volleyball court, and horseshoe-tossing area, among other things. The remaining 13 acres, when completed in January, will contain a pavilion, 1,000-foot boardwalk, and four nature displays on the biology of the park. The city will conduct nature tours of the area when that area is completed.
Moale said the city first began to pursue the site’s development as a park when it was named “one of the finest freshwater swamps” in the area in the county’s 1981 Comprehensive Plan. The county also said the site was one of the few remaining urban wilderness areas.
“The potential of that site was just enormous,” Moale said. “We feel that it is in the city’s best interest to save this site as a park.”
