Persistence paid off for the Town of Patagonia recently when it received word that it has been awarded a $79,175 grant to implement several improvements to Doc Mock and Richardson Parks.
The announcement came two years after the town approved an ambitious master plan for upgrading Doc Mock Park, which was prepared by a team of local citizens led by Caleb Weaver, who also authored the grant proposal.
The Arizona State Parks & Trails grant will pay for several enhancements to Doc Mock Park along with playground-safe wood chips in Richardson Park. The Doc Mock Park improvements include a ramada over the existing Doc Mock memorial and benches; a concrete pathway connecting 4th Avenue to the covered picnic area at the far west end of the park; and a map showing linkages to area trails.
Central to Doc Mock Park’s enhancements is a 6-foot wide ADA-accessible concrete pathway. This pathway – which is inspired by the existing path in the eastern portion of the town park – will allow pedestrian access through the center of Doc Mock Park. Preliminary plans for the pathway’s design call for a planter and two access points to 4th Avenue. The pathway will then connect to a new ramada and eventually to the two covered picnic areas at the far west end of Doc Mock Park.
Three spurs will connect the pathway south to McKeown Avenue – two on either side of the mesquite/ash grove and another to TNC’s Cemetery Trail. These spurs will still allow parking in the southern portion of the park for big events, while blocking vehicular access north of the pathway and under the mesquite/ash grove.
The grant includes the installation of four new educational signs along the pathway – one of which will show links to the Arizona Trail, The Nature Conservancy and Paton Center trails and other trails in the Mountain Empire Region. The Patagonia Museum has offered to gather information for the signs.
In 2014 the Town received a $14,000 grant from Arizona Forestry with which it used $5,000 to contract with Borderlands Restoration to develop a master plan for Doc Mock Park. Weaver worked with Mary McKay, Bryan Jungers, Kate Tirion, and youth from the Patagonia Youth Enrichment Center to develop the plan which the town aproved after a year of community input. Weaver expects that this latest grant will lay the groundwork for a series of additional grants that will allow the town to implement more of the master plan’s features. Upwards of a million dollars would be required to implement all elements of the plan.
While Weaver and his colleagues were paid to produce the master plan, they will not be paid out of grant funds to implement these new improvements. Although it will not receive any of the new grant funds, Weaver’s current employer, Borderlands Restoration Network (formerly Borderlands Habitat Network), has donated his services to this project and will continue to do so as his regular job duties permit.
According to Weaver, these “hardscape” features will lay the foundation for future improvements that will focus more on infiltrating rainwater and planting native trees in the park. Before any of these improvements can be implemented, however, the town will need to get clearances required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the State Historic Preservation Office. Actual construction is expected to begin this fall or winter and be completed by the end of next calendar year.