Photo: Todd Gill, Fayetteville Flyer
A project to improve to the parking lot at Gregory Park is scheduled to begin this week in midtown Fayetteville.
The city’s park department has contracted with 81 Construction Group to refurbish the parking lot, add accessible sidewalks, and make other improvements to the area.
Work is set to begin Monday, July 29 and take approximately four months to complete, according to a city news release. Inclement weather could delay the project timeline, the release stated.
The park’s trails will remain open during construction, but the parking lot will be closed to vehicles. Street parking is available on residential streets near the park such as Woolsey Avenue, Green Valley Avenue, and Woodland Avenue, but officials are asking park users not to use the parking lots reserved for patrons of nearby businesses. Ozark Regional Transit’s Route 10 has stops nearby on College Avenue.
Crews last year completed a series of new singletrack mountain biking trails at the park.
Local artist Jason Jones in August will begin work on a mural on a 20-foot by 10-foot wooden wallride along Rolling Thunder, a downhill-only, beginner-level flow trail near the northeast portion of the park. The Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission gave $2,500 to Ozark Off Road Cyclists for the mural. The cycling advocacy group plans to donate the mural to the city at no cost. The A&P Commission agreed to repair the mural if it is ever damaged.
About Gregory Park
The transformation of midtown’s Gregory Park was completed in late summer 2018 when crews finished construction of a series of singletrack mountain biking trails, along with a pump track and skills course at the 19-acre park on Sycamore Street just west of North College Avenue.
The land was donated to the city by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 1964. It includes a pavilion and a picnic area. Before the new construction, it included a 0.6-mile nature trail that had been damaged in several places from erosion.
The pump track and skills course are both located in the north part of the park along Sycamore Street.
The trails include Morning Light, a multi-use loop that circles the outer edges of the park and is used to access the two new one-way trails that start at the top of the hill; Rolling Thunder, a downhill-only, beginner-level flow trail; and Tailwind, a downhill-only, intermediate-level flow trail.
Pump Track
Skills course
Morning Light – multi-use access loop
Rolling Thunder – beginner flow trail
Tailwind – intermediate flow trail
