LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport’s Westside Community Park continues to be a place of new amenities and upgrades, as the latest construction projects move forward.
Dennis Rollins, chair of the Westside Community Park Committee – which has a lease with the city of Lakeport for the park – said the group spent about $100,000 last year on phase two improvements at the park, located at 1401 Westside Park Road.
He said there are other phases that are well into the future in the park’s development.
The funds that made the latest work possible were a mix of a grant from the Stewardship Council and locally raised donations, Rollins said.
“It’s been a community effort,” with many local businesses stepping up to offer free help, Rollins told the Lakeport City Council last month during one of his periodic updates to the city.
Rollins and the committee recently asked for, and received, Lakeport City Council support for renaming the playing fields in the second phase for the late Jane Keeling Barnes, a longtime youth advocate and community leader.
The Keeling-Barnes Family Foundation as well as Jane Barnes’ husband, Victor, have been the largest private financial supports of the park, donating about $90,000, Rollins told the council in a Jan. 3 letter.
According to her biography, Barnes was a fourth generation Lake County resident, born and raised in Lakeport. Her children – Wilda Shock, Ken Barnes, Pete Dorsett and Susie LaPointe – have continued her tradition of community service and involvement by supporting the park as well as other worth local projects.
Rollins told Lake County News that among recently completed projects in the park’s seven acre phase two are two new backstops at the baseball fields, each built for just under $5,000 – there eventually will be a total of four – and earlier this month they were able to work on dugout construction.
The committee hopes to have everything but the dugout seating done before the spring construction season starts April 15, Rollins said.
The 60 acre park’s current amenities include a walking trail, a dog park which Rollins noted is “quite popular” and attracts visitors from around the county, phase one soccer fields and a phase two soccer field that will be usable this summer, with the baseball field expected to be ready by July, according to Rollins.
Phase two also includes the area that is slated to be a skateboard and BMX track, projects that are still in the future, Rollins said.
Among the proposed goals which Rollins said the committee will consider for the coming year are putting up the memorial sign for the Jane Barnes Field, purchase and installation of dugout benches, grading of the baseball infields, adding infield dirt and completing the infields, and covering the spectator area with grindings to create a hard surface.
They also plan to install bleachers they received from Clear Lake High School, extend a water line to the park’s south end and get some drinking fountains, Rollins said. The Lions Club plans to work on improving the park’s horseshoe area this year as well.
With all of this work, “Our finances are getting pretty low,” said Rollins.
He said the park recently had a donation from one of its longtime supporters, Henry Anderson, a Lakeport resident and Pearl Harbor survivor.
However, more funds are needed to keep the park going forward.
Anyone interested in donating can contact Rollins at 707-263-7091.
For more about the park, visit http://www.westsidecommunitypark.org/ .
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.