Upgrades to the park at the Sterchi Farm trailhead of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway are nearly complete.
In April, a grand opening event was held for the city’s first piece of environmental art, an “adventure trail” built by Portland-based sculptural landscape artist Adam Kuby. It features a field of challenging obstacles, such as repurposed logs from the Miller Park revitalization, that users can traverse. The installation was funded by a donation from The Lyndhurst Foundation and a grant from the National Recreation and Park Association and The Walt Disney Company.
Following the grand opening of the adventure trail on April 28, the city closed the park for upgrades, including the addition of a pavilion with restroom facilities and paving the parking lot.
Nearby resident Heather Wheatley and her daughter were among the attendees at the April 28 grand opening, which also featured live music, food trucks and kayak rentals. When they returned to the park to play last month, they were surprised to find the adventure trail overgrown with weeds.
“It is very set off from the main concrete walking trail and there are no visible paths to get over to the park. It is so overgrown that we could barely see it from the path,” Wheatley wrote in an email to the Times Free Press on July 11. “I am just curious as to why so much time, energy and money were spent on this only to let it get overgrown with weeds.”