By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Average.

That’s how Phil Nadeau describes Kennedy Park.

“It’s fine, as far as parks go,” said Nadeau, Lewiston’s assistant city administrator. “It was built for a different time, when people used it differently.”

Recreation Director Maggie Chisholm said there’s nothing wrong with Kennedy Park as it is. It has more than seven acres of grass and landscaping with a basketball court, a playground and a swimming pool at one end.

“But we’ve done so much with so many other places in Lewiston,” she said. Courthouse Plaza, Railroad Park and work on Lisbon Street’s Southern Gateway are all evidence of that.

“It’s just time now to do the same thing at Kennedy Park,” she said. “It’s Kennedy Park’s turn.”

Nadeau, Chisholm and a handful of city officials and park neighbors will begin working on a new master plan for the park Monday. The goal is to decide how the park should fit into Lewiston life in the coming years and begin figuring out how much that will cost.

The park’s biggest change in years is right around the corner. A group of local volunteers hope to break ground this fall on a new skate park along the western edge. It fits in with current uses, they said.

“We’re already seeing the more active uses, like the skate park and the pool, along one side,” Chisholm said. “More contemplative uses tend to be on the other.”

That’s the goal, to keep the park a favorite place for a broad range of citizens.

“If you want to do something active, there’s a place for that,” Chisholm said. “If you want to read a book quietly by yourself, you can do that.”

The group will look at modernizing parts of it, including work on the old gazebo in the northeastern part of the park. The group might even consider doing away with the wading pool across from Chestnut Street.

“One thing that’s sure is that there will be a public pool on that spot,” Nadeau said. The main pool has been a fixture at the park for at least 30 years. But city officials are considering replacing the wading pool with a fountain or water table – something that wouldn’t require two lifeguards to keep watch over it.

“Kids love those,” Chisholm said. “They’d get just as wet and could play in it just as much. But it’d be different.”

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