City Of Bridgeport Receives Grant For Upgrades To Berryman Park

The City of Bridgeport has received a $500,000 grant to make improvements at Berryman Park.

The grant was administered by the Recreation of Conservation Office and requires a $250,000 match by the City.

Kurt Danison, a contract planner for the City, says the grant will help in funding a long to-do list at the park.

"We'll be replacing the restroom, the picnic shelter, and the playground equipment. We're also intending to resurface the sports court. They'll also be a new handicap-accessible trail and a new handicap-accessible parking space, as well as some new signage."

The park was built roughly 70 years ago and Danison says many of the scheduled upgrades are long overdue.

"Public works has been doing everything it can to keep things functioning there in recent years but I'm pretty sure the restroom there was built in the late (19)50s and almost all of the improvements there since then, with the exception of a few pieces of playground equipment, are original to the park. The park was developed by a group of volunteers who were all engineers at Chief Joseph Dam when it began construction."

The City's grant application was ranked fourth in the state within the Local Parks Program for 2022.

Danison says the match portion of the grant will come from the City's general fund, along with money it received from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) during the pandemic.

The project is first of three improvement phases at the park at is expected to be complete by sometime next year.