Grass-roots art: Huntridge-area residents await opening of Circle Park

Sito Negron

Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003 | 11:10 a.m.

Huntridge-area residents have worked with Las Vegas officials for more than 18 months to turn an oval of urban parkland into a unique reflection of their neighborhood, and they're almost ready to show it off.

Circle Park includes not just a colorful state-of-the-art play area for children but also two labyrinths, murals and tables designed to look like martini glasses.

The park is scheduled to open Nov. 15, further defining the area around Charleston Boulevard and Maryland Parkway as a vital element of the city's residential artistic community, starting only blocks away from the fledgling Arts District.

"We wanted it to be reflective of our neighborhood," said Ben Contine, past president of the West Circle Neighborhood Association. "We didn't want it to be the same as Summerlin or Green Valley. We wanted it to reflect the history and energy of our neighborhood."

The park covers a little more than 3 acres and is surrounded by three lanes of Maryland Parkway on both sides. Safety was the foremost concern, along with pedestrian access, so there are less than 20 parking spaces total, and a button-operated crossing signal on either side of the park.

"There was no sense putting anything there if people can't cross (the adjacent streets) safely," said Ward 3 Councilman Gary Reese, who worked with the neighborhood to renovate the park.

The process of designing and renovating the park took about a year and a half -- lightning fast by government standards -- and cost about $1.7 million.

In its early days in the 1940s, the park served as ballfields and a gathering place for residents of the Huntridge subdivision, built during World War II and the first major addition to Las Vegas south of Charleston Boulevard. The subdivision extended from 10th to 15th streets and from Charleston to Oakey Boulevard, named after the developer of Huntridge, Thomas Oakey.

The neighborhood, which grew with various developments over the next 20 years to extend to Sahara Avenue, from Las Vegas Boulevard to Eastern Avenue, is a diverse mix of ethnicities and occupations, although there is a distinct artistic strain.

"People move here because they want something different than the stucco box suburban experience," Contine said. "In the park, everything from the landscaping to the labyrinth to the children's area is unique."

The children's area includes a rubberized surface marked in swaths of orange, blue, yellow, purple and green, and a speaking tube with the two ends about 50 feet apart. It also features a sundial, in which the child's shadow marks the time, and a climbing ball, a meteorite-looking thing about 4 feet high.

"We wanted kids to use their imagination," said Kasey Baker-Benoit, a neighborhood resident who helped design the project, noting that the child's area even features a miniature labyrinth. "It blurs the line between a playground for kids and a playground for adults."

An art walk, with telephone poles set at angles into the ground, and studded with hooks to hang works, is next to the labyrinth, a meditative walk that circles to a conclusion. The park also includes restrooms covered in murals from nearby elementary school students, and a small amphitheater for neighborhood events.

A former Las Vegas artist, now living in Los Angeles, is making the benches, concrete slabs set low on one end for children, higher on the other ends, and arranged to surround the martini glass-shaped tables on three sides. The third side is open to provide access to people in wheelchairs.

"It's nice to see public art in city parks," said Christoff Koon, the artist. Las Vegas, he said, "is very willing to try to use new media in public places."