An ex-city councilman urged his former colleagues to invest in Chickasha parks, especially the pedestrian bridge in Shannon Springs Park.
The bridge that spans the lake in the 43-acre park is 196 feet long and 4.5 feet wide, said Spencer Winzenried, Chickasha’s parks and recreation director. The bridge has a wooden deck and wooden handrails but is supported by concrete piers. The bridge is more than 50 years old “and needs to be replaced to be ADA-accessible and to support park visitors for the next generation,” former City Manager Keith Johnson said last year.
“We still need engineering and specs to be able to plot a path forward for renovation of that bridge” instead of letting it “languish,” Councilman Kelly Boyd told the council on May 19. “More than 200,000 people visit Shannon Springs Park each year.”
The bridge is a featured attraction in Chickasha’s Festival of Light during the Christmas holiday; volunteers string 1,094 strands of lights containing 76,580 bulbs, according to former Mayor Chris Mosley, who has coordinated that operation for several years.
The council voted a year ago to apply for a state grant to replace the pedestrian bridge in Shannon Springs Park. Transportation Alternatives Program grants have been provided through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted in 2021, were administered by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, and have been awarded every other year.
The $1,427,361 TAP grant would have required $285,472 in matching local funds. However, “We did not get that one,” Winzenried said. Unless the program is canceled by the federal government, the next round of grants will be presented in October 2026, he said.
Meanwhile, “We have an emerging benefit to the city,” Boyd said: Legacy Grants awarded by the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.
Chickasha’s sports complex has been “the best in the region for 25 years, but we’re starting to get some competition” from facilities being built in “cities around us,” he said. Chickasha’s sports complex “is in need of renovations and updates.”
In fact, Boyd said, Shannon Springs, Washita and Centennial parks “all need some form of updates” to make them better for Chickasha’s growing community. “We’ve ticked up a little; our population is now a little over 17,000,” he noted.
Boyd urged the council to “take another deep dive” into the city’s park system and consider TSET grants as a potential funding source.