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VALLEY — A crowd of approximately 40 people gathered inside East Alabama Fire Station No. 2 Tuesday evening to hear a proposal of how the Fairfax Mill site can be transformed into a public park.

Fairfax Mill at one time was the heart and soul of community life. A new park on the same site could have a similar purpose, this time not drawing people for work but for relaxation.

Landscape architect Scott Colomb was three to present a powerpoint program showing renderings of what the site can become. The mill site is approximately 25 acres in size and is surrounded on all sides by homes, churches and a school. There new fire station is on its northern side.

Colomb was introduced by District 2 Council Member Jim Jones, who has represented the Fairfax area on the city council for the better part of three decades.

“I am glad to see this big turnout tonight,” Jones said. “It shows there is great interest in what the city can do with this site. Good attendance at such public meetings is important in getting grant funding. We will need that to develop the land into a new park.”

A grant from the Charter Foundation has funded what’s been done thus far.

“Scott and his group have been working on this for eight months now,” Jones said. “I am excited about what they are coming up with, and I am sure you will be too when you see what we can do.”

Other city officials present included Mayor Leonard Riley and council members Jim Clark and Marquetta Madden.

Jones said he understands the frustration many Fairfax area residents were feeling during the period when the mill was abandoned and then torn down, leaving a huge eyesore. A Brownfields grant received by the city enabled a cleanup, having a large site ready for redevelopment.

“We’ve thought it would make a nice greenspace area for the community,” Jones said. “We have long felt it would be a great place to walk, exercise, spend time with the family and to enjoy all kinds of activities. I’m sure a lot of people who are here tonight have a family connection to Fairfax Mill. You may have worked there at some point or a member of your family did. I worked in the mill for 32 years.”

He added that one area of the new park should bring back memories for anyone who had ever been in Fairfax Mill. “We called the place where all the looms were the big alley,” Jones said. “There’s a proposal for the park to have a long, tree-lined area very close to where the big alley once was. We could call it the promenade, and it will be a place people will surely like to walk.”

Jones had some thank-yous in order for the project to have gotten along as far as it has. “I want to thank Mayor Riley for his support,” he said. “I also want to thank our public works director, Patrick Bolt, and his department for what they have done thus far. The city’s planning committee has been very helpful as have school officials at Fairfax Elementary School. We believe the new park will make a great outdoor classroom for the students.”

“I especially want to thank Scott and his group,” Jones said. “They have done great work in getting us to where we are.”

Colomb told the gathering he had been a landscape architect since the 1980s and had learned a lot over his career. “It’s how you live on the land,” he said. “I believe very much that your city should be like your backyard. It’s also good to have amenities that draw people here, to have things in Valley they can’t find anywhere else.”

Colomb he didn’t know much about Valley until he got involved in the current project. “I have found it to be a hidden gem,” he said. “I knew there were people like Jim who were passionate about the town and the opportunities it had. We walked over the site a number of times, thinking of ways we could repurpose it.”

Colomb made it clear that what it would be talking about was not a finished product and was something flexible enough to incorporate new ideas.

The overall goal, he said, was to have a park that promotes good health and well being of the people in the area and promotes education for local students.

“I know it was heartbreaking when the mills left,” he said. “We want to get across in the park’s development the legacy of the mills.”

He said the nearby CV Railway Trail would have an important role in the way the park is developed. Also important is a nearby Veterans Monument, the Methodist and Baptist churches. The new sidewalks along Boulevard are a good addition that could enhance the park as well.

In its present form, the design plan has a dog park in the upper portion of the site, not far from the fire station. It will lie somewhat below Boulevard and will be sheltered from the street traffic. “It’s important for it to be off the road,” Colomb explained. “It will be approximately eight-tenths of an acre in size and will have multiple play areas for both large dogs and small ones. The more you can keep them separate the better. There will be lots of nearby parking.”

A long promenade will lead from the dog park to a pavilion that can be built on the south side, not far from an existing warehouse. The promenade will be an estimated 720 feet long and some 16 feet wide an lined with trees on both sides. Near the promenade will be a grassy field approximately six acres in size. There will be some rolling terrain with flowering trees and a number of walking paths. One of the paths will enter the site along the old rail spur that led to the mill. It will be tree lined and lead to an area that ’s could be called “The Ramble,” a circular place surrounded by trees.

While the mill office was once the heartbeat of the mill itself, the park will have a plaza area with a great lawn nearby. It can be seen as the heartbeat of the park. A walkway leading from the Veteran’s Monument will intersect with the promenade near the great lawn.

“We will have secondary trails looping through the park,” Colomb said. “There will be a lot of nice, open lawns. It will be a nice place for such events as art shows, festivals, Easter egg hunts, and family games. The trees we will be planting won’t reach any significant size in our lifetimes, but our grandchildren will live to see it.”

The south end of the park will have a community pavilion complex. It will be across from Fairfax School and will feature a main pavilion with an amphitheatre. This could be a center for much activity. Colomb visualizes it to be similar to Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia. It’s a well-known open air setting where lots of people congregate.

Colomb said there’s a place in downtown Carrollton, Georgia that consistently draws lots of people and sets a good example of building something people will come to.

The community pavilion will be a great location for outdoor art classes. It would also be an ideal location for master gardening classes to meet. The new park would also be a great location for a community garden.

The community pavilion will be the new park’s destination point. “It will be the place people will want to walk to,” Colomb said.

A big challenge Colomb and his group has had to deal with is what to do with the existing warehouse. “It’s too expensive to tear down, but it’s a concrete building,” he said. “It can be a storage place for lawn equipment. Its second floor has a high ceiling. That presents lots of opportunities, such as areas for classroom instruction and maybe a pickleball court. We are looking at a variety of options with this building.”

Next to the warehouse complex is a large open area that’s being visualized as The Ellipse. It’s similar to an area outside the White House in Washington, D.C. It could be an area frequented by food trucks and vendors. The area would be completely surrounded by trees, and parking would be nearby.

Colomb believes the Ellipse could be an area that could have the success that’s been seen in downtown Carrollton. “When they started it, some people thought they were crazy,” he said, “but it has been drawing lots and lots of people on a regular basis. They have a summer movie series and college football watch parties, and it’s all free. That’s what the people really like.”

“You can have events here in Valley people will come to,” he said. “If you do it right, people from outside Valley will come, too. I think you are on the cusp of something big here in Valley.”

One thing that led to the popularity of what’s in Carrollton was the installation of a fabric roof over the outdoor area. It protects the crowds underneath from sun and rain.

The Ramble will be an area where people can relax and enjoy the outdoors. “It will be the most natural part of the park,” Colomb said. “It will be a soft, simple place where people can walk, see the beauty of plants and to see the birds.”

In its present design, the park will have an estimated two-and-a-half miles of walking trails.

Colomb encourages Valley residents to have a larger view that the Fairfax Mill park being an ultimate destination. He suggests having the CV Railroad Trail as a means of linking other mill villages in a park network. Sites in Shawmut, Langdale and River View would make good parks, too.

“Similar things can be done at those sites, too,” he said. “You need to be thinking about what you can do there. You can have something that attracts people.”

Colomb said that Newnan, Georgia has had a successful project with this kind of linkage. People were reluctant at first but as the stage of development came together there was broad agreement that it had been a good thing for the community.

“I would like for you to be bolder in your thinking,” he said. “You can see development here.”

“We do need to invest in our community,” Council Member Jones said. “I don’t want for what we had in the mill village to die out completely. If you take the mill down, you can build it back up again in some way.”

Jones added that it has been his experience to learn that five things are vital for community growth: (1) education, (2) revenues, (3) quality, affordable housing, (4) amenities such as parks, an arts council and an historic commission and (5) a sense of community.

“This plan has definite health benefits,” Jones said. “Government agencies love that.”

“They also love taking a former mill site and turning into a community site,” Colomb said. “There are grants for places like the concrete warehouse as a place for solar panels. They could power the whole site.”

Colomb said he was hoping the word could get out that the former Fairfax Mill site could be transformed into something that will be beneficial for local people.

“If we had a nice park on this site, people would want to move here to live,” a woman in the crowd said.

Colomb encouraged everyone to think of the park coming together in phases. Phase One could be the dog park and the village green. The promenade, pavilion, amphitheatre and warehouse complex could come in the additional phases.