At the corner of Lyerly and East Main streets, an expanse of mottled grass outside East Side Elementary used to sit quiet and, aside from the occasional field day, unused.
“It was wasted space, it really was,” said Greg Wilkey, the school’s principal.
By early next year, that space is set to be activated — with new play structures and a turf field — as a schoolyard during the day and as a park for the surrounding community outside school hours, leaders with the Trust for Public Land announced Friday.
“In many communities, the largest public land owner is the school district,” Noel Durant, state director for the trust, said at the site. “Being able to partner with school districts to create schoolyards, to both improve student experience as well as park access, means that there’s potential to scale far beyond just having to go buy an individual piece of greenfield and turn it into a park.”