The City of Bessemer held a sledgehammer/groundbreaking event on Tuesday, April 15 to celebrate the start of a planned renovation of Roosevelt Park and construction of the city’s first-ever Recreational and Wellness Facility.
The event was held at the site of the former James A. Davis Middle School. The school building is being demolished as part of the first phase of the renovation project.
On hand for the event were Mayor Kenneth E. Gulley, members of the Bessemer City Council, Architect Charles Williams, Sr. of Charles Williams and Associates of Birmingham, and Walter Howlett, of the A.G. Gaston/SARCOR Program Management team.
The Reverend C.D. Patterson of Second Avenue Beulah Baptist Church in Bessemer gave the invocation and blessing of the project. Patterson is the longest serving pastor in the City of Bessemer.
The program included comments from Mayor Gulley, Council President Sarah Belcher, Williams and Howlett.
The proposed 55,000-square foot Recreational Facility is expected to be bid later this year. The demolition of Davis School will take approximately 60 to 90 days and is being done by Meredith Environmental.
The Recreational Facility is expected to open in Spring of 2016. The Recreational Facility is one of two major building projects the city is doing this year. The city is also building a new City Hall building at the corner of Third Avenue North and 17th Street in downtown Bessemer. That project is slated to begin later this summer.
A Public Comment/Presentation of the proposed park program will be held on April 29 at 6 p.m. at the Bessemer City Hall Auditorium.
Current proposals call for the 55,000-square foot Recreational Facility to be built and front Highway 150. The rest of the park will be dedicated to baseball fields, a walking track, a picnic pavilion, amphitheater, tennis courts and basketball courts.
“This is a special moment in the history of the City of Bessemer,” the mayor said.
