Portage Michigan:
Creating parks for the present and the future
By Miriam Downey
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The great landscape architect, Frederick Olmstead, who created Central Park in New York City, believed that civic parks had to be designed for users forty years into the future. With that philosophy in mind, the City of Portage has been developing a system of parks planned meet the needs of the burgeoning community as well as to protect the city’s natural resources.

Bill Deming has been planning the parks for the City of Portage for the last 25 years. He and his team have created virtually all of the parks that grace the city today with the thought that beyond the factories, strip malls, and schools, Portage’s parks make the city a delightful place to visit and a viable place to live. Quality of life for Portage families also means trees, flowers, lakes and the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors.

We began our tour of Portage parks with a walk along the Bicentennial Park walkway beginning at the Milham entrance. The pathway is asphalted and accessible to walkers, as well as people on roller blades, bikes, trikes, skate boards, strollers and wheelchairs.
“ The Portage pathways are invaluable to me. I can run or hike without worrying about traffic or exhaust, and the paths really reveal the natural beauty of this area. You get a glimpse of what it looked like before the development; and there are so many different parks that I don’t get bored going to the same place every weekend,” said one park enthusiast.

Park benches are strategically placed as are trash cans. The path wends its way for 3.5 miles to Celery Flats, under I94, along the railroad tracks, beside Portage Creek, through boggy areas, fields and woods. We were pleased to find mile markers along the way helping us know how far we had come; it is the perfect path for fitness walking, because it is relatively flat and unfettered with cross streets and wheeled traffic.

Our second walk was of a far different sort. We parked at the West Lake Nature Preserve off South Westnedge, and walked on a series of wood chip nature trails, asphalt walkways and plastic wetland decking, through the South Westnedge Park, the Bishop’s Bog Preserve and Schrier Park to another parking lot by Osterhout Road. We realized as we walked that the Bishop’s Bog was soon going to be alive with wetland flowers and birds. That hike was 1.75 miles and made significant use of natural settings. On both of our walks, while we knew we were in a city, we felt like we were taking a respite from the busy-ness of the South Westnedge business corridor.

There is something for everyone in the Portage parks system. There are swimming beaches, ice skating rinks, basketball and tennis courts, canoeing, soccer fields, and picnic areas. Cultural events occur at both Celery Flats and Overlander Bandshell in the city’s Central Park. Nearly every neighborhood has green space with playgrounds, inline hockey rinks, picnic areas and restrooms. The city is filled with bikeways, and there are even sledding hills in the Oakland Drive Park.

The concrete skatepark at South Westnedge Park is one of the park system’s newest and most well-received parks. The skatepark is drawing skate boarders from all over the area, and they return again and again. Parents enjoy sitting on the park benches watching their children, and senior citizen groups have been known to gather and gasp in amazement at “what those kids can do!”

One of the ongoing goals of Bill Deming and the Portage park system is to link all the parks so that users can have access to the entire park system without having to use their cars. He says, “The safer you make it, the better you make it – the more it will get used.”

The park system has an excellent website with information about all the Portage Parks with maps, descriptions and photographs. www.portagemi.com/living/parks.asp

It has been said that the quality of a city can be measured by the effort that is made to develop and maintain its parks. We tip our hats and say thanks to the City of Portage for its foresight in creating green spaces and recreational facilities for now and for the future.