Where once East Side Elementary School had an underused expanse of grass, it now has a turf soccer field, among other new features.
The school, joined by officials with the Trust for Public Land, Hamilton County, the city of Chattanooga and others, cut the ribbon Tuesday morning for the East Side Community Schoolyard. The new green space provides recreational opportunities for East Side Elementary students during the day and for the broader community outside school hours.
“Today is about more than just the park,” East Side Elementary Principal Greg Wilkey said in his remarks. “It’s about opening up possibilities. It’s about what can happen when a school and a community dream together, and then do the work together.”
The project has been several years in the making, with school students having the opportunity to provide input on what they wanted from the park for themselves, their families and their community. The new elements build upon the existing playground at the school, adding the soccer field, a covered pavilion, plenty of benches, a half-court basketball pad, a paved path around the playground, ground-level play features for children with disabilities and 60 trees.
East Side Elementary schoolyard becomes public park
The price tag for the schoolyard park is about $500,000, Trust for Public Land Parks and Schoolyards Program Manager David Johnson said in an interview. Both Chattanooga and Hamilton County contributed funding to the project, Johnson said.
While the Trust for Public Land has used the community schoolyard model across the nation, the East Side property is the first of this kind in Tennessee, Johnson said. The model provides park access in areas where there is limited green space.
“Even though Chattanooga’s an outdoor city … our neighborhood park access is pretty poor,” Johnson said.
In 2023, 32% of city residents lived within a 10-minute walk of a public park or trailhead, according to the Chattanooga Parks and Outdoors Plan. Schoolyard parks like the one at East Side Elementary are efficient ways to create more access, Johnson said.
(READ MORE: Chattanooga plans to add hundreds of acres of new park space in coming decades)
“We know that schools are usually our most trusted institutions in a community,” Johnson said. “This lets us invest in that institution while also letting them offer more to the community.”
For Wilkey, the school’s principal, the schoolyard park is the realization of a professional goal: to make East Side a community school, a place welcoming to everyone.
“They’ve been just chomping at the bit for this to open,” Wilkey said of the school’s students. “So, knowing that now they can play on it just warms my heart.”
The Trust for Public Land is working on other community schoolyards in Hamilton County, Johnson said. Next up is Hardy Elementary School on Glass Street.
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Contact outdoors reporter Sam Still at sstill@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6579.