Wagner Park will get new sod next week
David Krause/The Aspen Times
Wagner Park, the site of this past weekend’s Food & Wine Classic, took a beating with thousands of people tromping the wet grass.
In order to make it presentable for the rest of the season, city crews Wednesday will begin ripping up the sod and dirt beneath it and haul it away to make room for new grass.
By next week, the park will be ready for sod to be laid down, which city parks operations manager Matt Kuhn expects to take four days to install.
“It will be green and new and beautiful and ready for the Fourth of July,” he said. “By June 29 we hope to have the park open by 5 p.m.”
The entire project costs $93,000 — $40,000 of which is paid for by Food & Wine event organizers and the rest is covered by the city.
The material that’s torn up and hauled away will go to Burlingame, an affordable-housing enclave across from Buttermilk, where it will be turned into topsoil and used for other projects.
This is the second year that the city has resodded Wagner Park after the Food & Wine event. Three years ago, a little over half of the park’s grass was replaced. And prior to that, the downtown open space was closed to the public for about a month so its surface could be renovated, Kuhn said.
He added that a lot of cities are doing a full sod replacement after big events in an effort to keep public amenities accessible.
“We need to get our town looking good and not have our marquee park closed,” Kuhn said.
