Oregon wins $400,000 park grant
OREGON – The Oregon Park District can go ahead with several park development projects because of a $400,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
The 50-50 matching grant will be used to develop the 94-acre Park West-Veterans Park complex that will include a splash play area, skate park, expansion of the park path system to create an exercise loop between the parks, creation of observation decks and a boardwalk through a 30-plus-acre wetland, and transformation of drainage ditches into natural bioswale areas to improve water quality.
Park District Executive Director Jim Coutts said that he is pleased the projects will become reality.
“It’s exciting for us to be awarded a grant that will give us the capacity to pursue some of the suggestions we received from the community when we did our strategic planning,” Coutts said.
The money is part of $16.9 million in grants for 49 park development and land acquisition projects throughout Illinois, IDNR Director Marc Miller said.
The projects will not raise property taxes, Coutts said.
