Chubbuck announces 3 new diverse parks

The city of Chubbuck is building three new parks as part of the city’s master plan.

The new parks will be built for a more diverse use and will include a lot of new features for the city.

The city of Chubbuck currently has 24 neighborhood parks but the city council felt what was lacking is a destination park – something diverse to really draw people in.

So the city council asked public works to come up with a solution.

“We got three projects,” said Bill Jackson, the landscape architect for the project. “We got the water education park, we’ve got the Miller park and then we’ve got the downtown park.”

The Espie Water Education Center will include a public pavilion on top of the water tank with education stations.

“It’s an opportunity for us to teach and instruct our residents in the community as a whole about everything from the aquifer to water conservation,” said Rodney Burch, public works director for the city of Chubbuck. “So it has components like urban orchards that teach us how to better irrigate.”

Then there will be Miller Park, a 33-acre recreational area.

“So the Miller Park also has diverse features,” Burch said. “It has a proposed dog park, both small and large dogs, it has pickleball, it has frisbee golf, it has an urban fishery that would be a partnership with the Idaho Fish and Game, it has an amphitheater component to that.”

Then there’s the downtown park, which will be incorporated into the rest of the downtown redevelopment, including a new city hall.

Part of the master plan also includes a goal to eventually have a park within half a mile of every resident.

“We want a walkable, bikable, connected community,” said Mayor Kevin England. “When I was a kid, my parents didn’t drive me around, I was able to get on my bike and go to the park and that’s the kind of thing we want to have available.”

“Parks are pleasing green spaces and I think it’s a human trait to want to to live near pleasing green spaces,” Jackson said. “And that’s what parks provide, so I just think they’re incredibly valuable to a community’s quality of life.”

England said this will all be done within the city’s budget and there will no increased taxes or other fees for the community.

“I’m excited about it because it brings on an aura to our community that really it hasn’t had in the past,” he said. “And it does bring some pride but more importantly, it has that as its roots that we just come together as a community and we unite.”

“We acknowledge that we’re going to a better community in the future and we’re excited to have the influence and we like to make sure that that happens,” Burch said.

Burch added the city hopes to have the water tank and the Espie Water Education Center finished within the next three years.

Miller Park, which will eventually include a new fire station as well, is about five years out.

The water tank, and the public’s access to it, is the first in the state to be approved by the Department of Environmental Quality.