A final design concept has been chosen from among 14 initial design proposals to improve the disused field house in the Near West Side’s Skiddy Park.

Renovations to the field house will include installing a skylight on the roof and adding another door to the building to create a breezeway, said Cesi Kohen, a fourth-year architecture student involved with the project. The design also calls for the creation of a stand-alone structure near the field house to house the bicycles used by the Bicycles and Ideas for Kids’ Empowerment -Syracuse. The new structure will have other uses, Kohen said, but moving the bikes out of the field house will free up space for other activities.

The field house is no longer in use and Park Studio — a partnership among Syracuse University students, Near West Side residents and city officials — began working this semester to plan how renovations to the field house could benefit the community.

“Right now it’s kind of a crazy process. We’re just going to push through,” Kohen said. “We’ve been told that the Parks Department’s hope is that it will be done in a year and a half so that by the time we graduate we can actually see it.”

In designing the improvements, students narrowed down the initial list of 14 designs to three concepts and then presented them to the community for feedback, Kohen said. The students chose one scheme and are now detailing various aspects of the design. They have also begun working with engineers to start thinking about structural issues, she said.

Students hope to finalize a design by the end of the semester, said Brian Luce, the engagement fellow at UPSTATE: Center for Design, Research and Real Estate, who is helping organize the project. The students are currently creating one-inch to one-foot models of different parts of the design, Luce said. Though university students are creating the designs, he stressed that all the concepts came from community input.

“It shouldn’t be this thing that’s created in the university and then comes down like a spaceship landing in the Near West Side. That’s not what we want,” Luce said. “What we’re after is figuring out what they want and developing it in a way that professionals do.”

Park Studio has already held three meetings to gauge community interest and will hold one more at the end of April to reveal the final design, said Stacey Lindbloom, the engagement scholar for the Near West Side Initiative.

In addition to these meetings, Park Studio has installed chalkboards at several places in the Near West Side where residents can leave feedback about the project. The chalkboards are located in Nojaim Brothers Super Market, La Liga, La Casita Cultural Center, 601 Tully and the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Although the chalkboards will give the community another way to provide feedback and are a good way to publicize the project, Lindbloom said she wished they had been installed earlier in the process.

When seeking community input, it’s important that the renovations benefit the entire community and not just one organization, said Luz Encarnación, the youth program coordinator and community liaison for La Casita Cultural Center, which is located two blocks from Skiddy Park. Specifically, she said she’s worried that the stand-alone multi-purpose structure will only be used to hold B.I.K.E-Syracuse’s bikes and will not be available for use by other organizations.

Since the structure will hold as many as 30 bikes, questions such as how the bikes will be secured, who will have a key to the building and how the space will be maintained need to be thought out, she said. For the building to be truly multi-purpose, the design needs to incorporate the needs of other organizations in the community, she said.

In the future, Encarnación would like to see more families visit the park and use it for cook-outs and barbeques that foster a sense of community.

“What’s most important is the usage and security of the building,” Encarnación said. “We really want to see family-oriented usage of the park.”

Published on April 2, 2014 at 2:16 am

Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta