CALUMET VILLAGE — Calumet Village Manager Megan Haselden wants Agassiz Park to become a popular recreational space for community members again. Just one of her visions for the park, she said, is to see kids playing there and families having picnics.

“I’m hoping that in the future I can get the park to be open year-round,” Haselden said.

Her goal is to provide free WiFi for the park and for local students to use the pavilion as a study area.

“I’ve got some pretty ideas for the park,” she said, “but like everything, it takes time to come to fruition.”

Haselden said that she has heard from many residents that nobody uses the park.

Raven Bromley, a 2020 graduate of CLK Schools, said that growing up, she and her friends did not use the park except occasionally during high school football games. They knew it was called Agassiz Park, she said, and that technically it was a public park, but they were also aware that it was never used.

“We never went there,” Bromley said. “Even with the school being right there, we never went and had activities or did anything there.”

Bromely said the only times she and her friends visited the park were during football games.

“If you weren’t in the football game and you were trying to get away for a minute, you just went to the park, but that was when they had benches and stuff there.”

The benches made the park more inviting, she said, but they were removed several years ago, and she does not recall the park ever having picnic tables.

“It hasn’t had benches for a long time, actually,” she said.

Bromley said that she has always used the park as a trail from the village to the school, adding that two different trails lead to the school gate and that was all she had used the park for.

Originally, the park, designed by New England landscape designer and city planner, Warren H. Manning, was significantly larger than it is today.

A study of the park published by the National Park Service described the original space as an eight-sided star with a statue of Alexander Agassiz at its center. The center of the star is located due east of the intersection of Portland and Fourth Streets, about 450 feet. Paths extend from the star’s center to each of the side streets entering Fourth Street (i.e., Scott, Portland, Oak and Elm). To the east and south of the center a series of tree-lined pathways of Lombardy poplar radiate towards the east line of the park and serve to define the flower beds. Running along the east line of the park is a long double row of Lombardy Poplar, with more flower beds immediately to their east. By offsetting the center of the star, Manning achieved a variety of sizes for the wedges between the various pathways. At the east end the wedges are intimate, small, tree-covered elegant flower beds. On the town side, or west, large open areas between the paths created easily distinguishable areas where picnickers and ball players, for instance, would be separated by pathways. The trees planted along the pathways from the town side to the center were dedicated to the local men who had served in the First World War.

The report says that the park was a popular place for band concerts, sporting events (it once boasted a tennis court and a baseball diamond), bird watching and just for strolling, but fell out of popular use after 1950, when the park was no longer maintained.