Wichita City Council members heard details Tuesday about a plan to convert a plot of land on the west side of the city into an urban wetlands park.
The Pracht Wetlands Park is located at 29th and Maize in west Wichita. The land was farmed by the Pracht family for about a century; after its sale to Slawson Co., 41 acres of the parcel was donated to the City of Wichita in 2015. The city already owned land to the south, which is also being converted.
RDG Planning and Design, which has offices in Iowa and Nebraska, is designing the park. The four-phase, $7.2 million plan includes a boardwalk, walking trail and viewing areas.
“We wanted to keep this site as special and original as it was," landscape architect Hans Klein-Hewett told council members Tuesday. "We didn’t want to go out there and carve too many new human interventions into this site, we wanted to keep it as a natural wetland.”
The first phase of the project is covered under the city’s Capital Improvement Program budget. Phase 2 will likely be paid for through grants and funds from the recent sale of the Hyatt Hotel.
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