After a contentious back and forth, Taylor Mill commissioners chose last week where to put a new amphitheater the city will build with grant money it received last month.
The two possible locations were a bowl-shaped area in Pride Park and a large, flat area farther into the park. The flat area eventually won out.
“My recommendation to the commission is I would like to see it put in the bowl,” said City Administrator Brian Haney. “And my main reason for requesting it there is that I do believe by being towards the front of the park it is more of a focal point, and it is easier for the police to watch for vandalism. I think back in the back it is too isolated.”
Gov. Andy Beshear delivered the check for $45,625 in person a few weeks ago, a grant from the state Land and Water division, and the amount will be matched by the city.
Pride Park has playgrounds up near the beginning of the park, but just beyond the playgrounds the ground slopes gently down into a bowl-shaped area. The city used to have a concert stage, and the bowl is where it was located. Recently the city added enough dirt to raise the bottom up forty feet.
The road into the park goes behind the Park Place and a fenced cemetery to a large flat area. That is where the city holds Tasty Tuesday, concerts, and other events. Last Friday people came up to the area to watch a Friday night movie.
That is also the second location the city is looking at for the amphitheater.
“I am kind of opposed to the bowl, because of a couple of things,” said Commissioner Caroline Braden. “The bowl is a downhill slope. It does have water problems. Now I know some of that can be fixed, but water flows downhill. It will require some money being put into water mitigation. So the flat space doesn’t have a water problem. Both are going to require some electrical work. You’re not going to get a stage with lights and things without some electrical work.”
She said the back part is easy to access for everyone, handicapped accessible, and people could put up chairs all over to listen to the concerts. Restrooms are relatively close, she pointed out, as is the location for food trucks. She said it could be a dual-purpose area in the future.
Braden is on the Parks Committee, and she said the stages they are using now cost the city $1,700 per event.
Mayor Dan Bell thought the issue could go both ways.
“The bowl offers two paved parking areas and two restrooms that are fairly accessible,” he said. “If you put it way back in that back field back there, depending on how far you go back, first of all that parking lot is not paved, so to me, you should pave that parking lot. And then the restrooms aren’t available there, too. It is a considerable walk up to the restrooms. If you put it in the bowl you’ve got restrooms on each side.”
Commissioner Mark Kreimborg said he was in the city when the other concert stage was located at the bowl location, and he said he thought most of the people who came would place their chairs at the top of the bowl, not wanting to go down the hill. He said he thinks there are better crowds now that the concerts are in the back field. Kreimborg agreed to go with whatever everyone wants.
“It is so easy to walk to that back field,” said Commissioner Rose Merritt, who said she agrees with Braden. “If you’ve been to the concerts, it is, so far, an older crowd that comes. I just think it makes so much more sense to use that back field. We’re not using it, I think it is a perfect place for an amphitheater.”
But Commissioner Dan Murray said putting the amphitheater in the back field was “the most lunatic” idea he had ever heard.
“We had crowd after crowd when we had it in the bowl down there in years past. We raised that ground 40 feet,” Murray said. “People enjoy coming out putting their blanket and looking down at the stage at the bands or whatever is going on down there. The older people who don’t want to mess with that, there’s plenty of room up at the top. There’s a path up there they can go either side of it, it’s all level. You have a bathroom on the right-hand side, and you have a bathroom on the left-hand side. You have asphalt parking lots.”
Bell said he attended the Northern Kentucky Symphony Orchestra’s concert at the bandshell in Covington’s Devou Park, and it was a very enjoyable evening. He said he saw many gray-haired people coming down the hill with blankets.
He said Taylor Mill’s restroom facilities are easier to access than in Devou, but no one seemed to have a problem. He reminded commissioners that the bowl in Pride Park has been terraced so it is more level and less steep. Bell said that he liked the sound of the music coming up the hill in Covington and thought it might be better than on a flat surface.
Public Works Director Marc Roden said that the path in the bowl was designed to be accessible for those who use wheelchairs or otherwise struggle to get around. He also said the road in the back field is not a great road, and the blacktop is only about an inch thick, so he thought heavy trucks might destroy the road.
Then the vote came.
Kreimborg, Merritt and Braden voted to put the new amphitheater in the back field, and Murray and Bell voted no, so the new stage will go in the back field.
