Anderson Trail County Park: the quarter-century field

ANDERSON AND BEECH ROADS · COUNTY-OWNED 1999 · BOND APPROVED JUNE 10, 2025 · UNDER CONSTRUCTION 2026

The largest park fact on this ground is a park that did not exist for twenty-five years: the St. Joseph County Parks and Recreation Department acquired the Anderson Road property in 1999 — some 115 acres at the northeast quadrant of Anderson and Beech Roads, in the county record's figure; the trustee, advocating against its idleness in 2022, wrote of "100+ acres," and both figures stand as their records give them — "and since that time," the department's master plan records, it "has been cash renting the tillable acreage and using the property for material storage." Conceptual master plans were drawn for the property over the years, as recently as 2022, without a build. Through those decades the ground's only course was the trustee's advocacy, and his August 2022 column prints it whole: "I've met with the parks department — and reached out to elected officials who could make use of it — to suggest, to plead, to offer to buy or lease. So far, no dice... the parks department went through two five-year planning cycles since I've been advocating, and still has absolutely no plans to use the property to serve the public, other than leasing it out as farmland." His remedy was four phone calls, and his measure of the county system from this ground: "your options are St. Patrick's, Ferrettie-Baugo creek or Bendix woods. Each of these is a long drive, and they are closer to (respectively) Michigan, Elkhart County and LaPorte County than they are to you." The land's own record — its ditches, drainage and farm tenancy — belongs to this build's Land leg and is pointed there; what belongs here is that the county's newest park spent its first quarter century as a rented farm field inside a community of thirty thousand.

The turn came through the department's own planning. The Parks and Recreation Master Plan process of 2023 recorded "a desire to develop the Anderson Road property" among its recurring public themes — the property "identified as a viable location for a new facility because of its location in the northeast region of the county and since it was already owned by a county agency" — and its plan for the ground — generally flat, its water table high, its surface water draining from northwest to southeast through Gast Ditch, its poorly drained areas lying near the east and south boundaries — kept the primary entrance on Anderson Road, set the higher-intensity uses toward the road, and let the land run natural toward the wood lots at its north. By May 2025 the parks board's packet already carried a proposed operating budget for the new park, and the county's television station was giving the ground its first press as "a long-awaited county park in Granger" (WNDU, May 20, 2025). In February 2025 the county Redevelopment Commission approved the design contract (ELC, Indiana LLC, with DLZ as lead design team), the design cost to be reimbursed from the park bond then contemplated; in March the commissioners engaged bond counsel. Through the spring the design went to the public: open houses on April 24 and May 29, 2025, at Discovery Middle School — inside the designated place itself — revealed the final concept: a gathering lawn around the entrance drive, an accessible and inclusive playground, a fishing pond and pier, an open-air shelter and trailhead, trails through the northern woods. A council member's door-to-door canvass of the Anderson Road district found, in the parks board's minutes, overwhelming support, with two reservations recorded — traffic on Anderson Road, and the loss of cornfields — and one neighbor's concern, from the Heatherwood Equestrian Academy, at fencing not shown in the drawings.

The money was voted on June 10, 2025. The county council approved, six to three, an ordinance authorizing the St. Joseph County Park District to issue up to $6.6 million in bonds — for Anderson Road Park and for deferred maintenance and improvements at the county's other parks, Bendix Woods and the LaSalle Trail among them. The roll call stands in the record: yes — Drake, Hess, Catanzarite, Tanner, Shabazz and President Schoetzle; no — Rutton, Thomas and Figg. The financing was structured, its supporters said, to replace a retiring highway bond with a smaller parks bond and raise no property taxes; the county's financial staff estimated total debt service near $9 million at four percent over the ordinance's maximum eighteen-year term, and parks staff projected some $180,000 a year in added operating cost for the new park against cash reserves of about $900,000. The park board's president was Larry Catanzarite, its attorney Catherine Fanello, and its director Steve Slauson, who described the property to the council as land-banked for about twenty-five years. The county's own newsletter called it, in September 2025, "a twenty five year fight for a better quality of life for our citizens" — won. The build then slipped once, in the same newsletter's telling: construction planned for September drew a single bid "far higher than what was expected," the process was restarted with clearer expectations, and bids were taken again in October, with completion still hoped for late the following year. At this build's date the ground is under construction beside The Hills' rising sections, on the Neighborhoods leg's parcel-side record, and the parks board's own minutes carry the department's expectation, from May 2025, of "the new Anderson Road County Park, which is expected to come online near the end of 2026." The park's name is conformed at assembly to the county's current working usage — Anderson Trail County Park, the name the Parks Board's minutes of November 18, 2025 and March 17, 2026 and the April 2026 bid packages carry throughout (cited in Current-Today); the earlier county forms, Anderson Road Park and Anderson Road County Park, stand in the quotations above as their records give them, and no formal naming act appears in the record reached.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Parks & Recreation Master Plan, chapter 4 (sjcparks.org) — the 1999 acquisition of the Anderson Road Property; the cash-renting and material storage since; the earlier concept plans to 2022; the alternate concept's layout. Chapter 3 — the 2023 public-input process and the desire to develop the property.
2. Granger Gazette, August 2022 (Lindsay) — the "100+ acres" figure; the advocacy, the buy-or-lease offer, the two planning cycles, the farmland verdict; the three county parks' distances from this ground.
3. St. Joseph County Redevelopment Commission, February 18, 2025, and Board of Commissioners, March 4, 2025 (Citizen Portal records) — the design contract with ELC and DLZ, reimbursement from the contemplated bond; the Dinsmore bond-counsel engagement.
4. St. Joseph County Parks Board minutes, May 20, 2025 (sjcparks.org) — the open houses of April 24 and May 29 at Discovery Middle School, the DLZ final concept, the door-to-door canvass and its two reservations, the fencing concern, the end-of-2026 expectation.
5. St. Joseph County Council, June 10, 2025 (Citizen Portal record) — the 6–3 approval and roll call, the $6.6 million authorization, the debt-service and operating figures, the no-tax-increase structure; Council President's remarks of June 17, 2025.
6. "Liberty and Progress: St. Joseph County Government News," September 5, 2025 — the twenty-five-year fight; the September start, the single over-expectation bid, the October rebid, completion hoped late the following year.
7. The Neighborhoods leg of this build — the park under construction beside The Hills, read from the county parcel record, November 2026.