May 26, 2011
Mayor Announces Name of New Riverfront Play Park
“Cumberland Park” Selected From More Than 200 Entries
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Mayor Karl Dean today announced Nashville’s new riverfront play park will be called Cumberland Park. Last fall Mayor Dean encouraged the Nashville community to suggest an appropriate name for the new family-oriented play park under construction on the east bank of the downtown riverfront. More than 200 suggestions were received from more than 170 people with Cumberland as the most frequently suggested name for the park.
“Since the founding of our city, the Cumberland River has been a vital economic and social link for Nashville, so it seems fitting this new active, family-oriented play park be named Cumberland Park,” said Dean. “The new play park will be distinctively Nashville and is the next step toward reclaiming Nashville’s waterfront and creating vibrant, active green spaces that bring families and visitors downtown to enjoy healthy activities.”
Cumberland Park is situated between the Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge and Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge and is currently under construction. The park is expected to open later this year. The park is designed to engage children and adults in a variety of creative play settings and will contain a series of play zones that offer a range of both active and passive recreational features such as natural play equipment for children, spray-grounds and water jets, bridges, climbing walls, walking paths, picnic areas, a stage with an open lawn, and a river walk.
“Cumberland Park will provide citizens and visitors of all types another great downtown park to enjoy and will be one of the best places to experience the river,” said Tommy Lynch, Interim Director of the Metropolitan Department of Parks and Recreation. “The redevelopment of Nashville’s riverfront is truly the vision of the many citizens who provided years of input into the new riverfront plan.”
Cumberland Park also includes a variety of sustainable features. For irrigation, the park is designed to harvest stormwater from the park and adjacent parking lots and bridges where it will be scrubbed and used for irrigation on the park site. Treated water used for the play park water features will also be recycled for irrigation use. Invasive plants are being removed from the riverbank and will be replaced with native plantings which will help decrease irrigation demand and improve ecological diversity. Most importantly, the former brownfield site is being totally remediated for its intended use and will return this waterfront area to a healthy, green space.
Phil Ryan, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency added, “Nashville is a world-class city and today we are transforming a former industrial site into a first-class park with some of the best views of downtown Nashville in the city. MDHA is taking great care to ensure the park is constructed safely and in accordance to the plan the citizens of Nashville envisioned for the site.”
Work is also underway on the renovation of the former Nashville Bridge Company building which will initially house Parks office space, concessions and public restrooms. Both Cumberland Park and the renovation of the former Nashville Bridge Company building are expected to be complete later this year. The projects carry a combined construction cost of around $16 million.
Nashville’s new riverfront development is designed to provide new public attractions, parkland and waterfront access, giving residents and visitors a reason to come and enjoy both sides of the riverfront. When fully implemented, the project area will be ten times the size of the existing Riverfront Park. The Nashville Riverfront Concept Plan was completed in 2007. Mayor Dean and the Metro Council allocated $30 million in the 2009-2010 capital spending plan to fund the initial phases of riverfront redevelopment.