Harris Township Park at Elm Road: the trustee's foundation

51520 ELM ROAD · CONCEIVED 2015 · PHASED FORWARD FROM 2016

The younger park is the trustee's own foundation, and his account of it is the record: a piece of vacant land the township already owned, on the east side of Elm Road between Clay Fire Station 24 and the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library's Harris Branch, just north of State Road 23, surrounded by subdivisions. Before it was a park it had one municipal use: "At one time, Harris Township Fire Department extrication training was performed there but since joining in the Clay Fire Territory such training moved to a site on Auten Road." In October 2015 the township hosted its first public forum on the proposal — the community meeting on the design was held at Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, on the Sports leg's record — and the preliminary design, by the local firm Lehman & Lehman, "instrumental in renovating Central Park in Mishawaka," was shown as, in the January 2016 account's words, "simply a jumping off point for the discussion," representing "a potential multi-phase, long-term plan that includes pavilions, a baseball field, a soccer field, a basketball court, a splash pad, open green space, a parking lot and more." The Granger Sunrise Rotary made a multi-year commitment to build the playground in the proposed park — swings, a slide, picnic tables and a pavilion among the items — holding fundraisers and recruiting volunteers to install equipment, with construction of the playground expected to begin in the spring of 2016.

What got built, and in what order, the record tells two ways, and both are printed. The trustee's own sequence, in August 2022, is given in years relative to his trusteeship rather than by calendar: "That year, I placed a soccer goal and some picnic tables on the land. People came. The next year, phase I of the park build was completed. People came to use the basketball court, pickleball courts and ball diamond. The next year a playground was added. Last year, a pavilion and seating areas." Read against a trusteeship that began in January 2015, the account's arithmetic puts courts and playground standing by 2018 and its pavilion by about 2021 — the reading the Sports leg prints, flagged there as the account's own arithmetic, not separately documented dates. The township's retrospective compresses the same course into a single year: "In 2016, Trustee Lindsay and the Harris board (Jeff Broadwick, Karen Vargo and Chuck Sulok) transformed township-owned land into Harris Township Park at Elm Road." The September 2018 Gazette fills in the courts: "Four courts were included in the construction of Harris Township Park at Elm Road, as developed by the Harris Township board and trustee Ken Lindsay. The park is located just south of the Harris branch library, where paddles and balls can be checked out at no charge" — pickleball lent out by the library next door. Of the 2016 plan's full list, the splash pad stands in no later account of the park, and no record reached shows it built; it is printed here as the plan's unbuilt element, at that strength. The trustee's verdict on the result stands as the park's present state: "That small park is busy, busy, busy, 12 months of the year."

Sources:

1. "The plan for a new park in Granger moves forward," Granger Does It magazine, January 2016 (harristwp.com) — the October forum, the Lehman & Lehman preliminary design and its multi-phase list, the Sunrise Rotary's playground commitment, construction expected that spring.
2. Granger Gazette, August 2022 (Lindsay) — the vacant township land, the extrication-training years, the phase sequence in the trustee's own order, the park's business twelve months of the year.
3. Granger Gazette, September 2018 (harristwp.com) — the four courts in the park's construction; the library's paddle and ball checkout.
4. Harris Township retrospective (harristwp.com) — the 2016 transformation under Lindsay and the board of Broadwick, Vargo and Sulok; the park's offerings and its Granger Path connection.
5. The Sports leg of this build — the Good Shepherd design meeting; the phase sequence read against the trusteeship's dates.