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By DONALD MOTTERN | Staff Writer 

MONTEVALLO – A sought-after community gathering space for Montevallo’s youth is one step closer to seeing the light of day following a presentation delivered by Impact Montevallo during the regularly scheduled Montevallo City Council meeting on Monday, Aug. 26.

The long-awaited project, which is described as a “youth conversation area,” has been in discussion as a potential development in the community for years, with youth in the community often leading those calls for its construction.

“This type of project has been talked about by the youth for many years,” said Sarah Hogan, director of Impact Montevallo. “It was added to Impact’s action plan for this year as one of our strategies to meet our goal to change the physical design of local public areas and to make them more friendly for youth engagement.”

In describing Impact’s efforts in designing the project, Hogan cemented the idea that a project intended for the community’s youth should take their needs and wants into account and have their ideas be paramount in its design.

“We’ve been surveying the youth at different events, meetings at the schools and junior city council,” Hogan said. “Everywhere we go, we kind of bring this up and gather their input. We’re finally to the point where everybody has kind of agreed on what they want.”

Hogan described that Impact’s findings reported that the community’s youth desired a location in a well-visible and easy to reach area. Specifically, she reported that those surveyed had selected Orr Park as their preferred location, with a preference that it be located on the side of Park Drive between the current pavilion and swing set.

In those same findings, which have been incorporated into design proposals, youth in the community stipulated that they would prefer the area be covered and include swings and solar powered outlets.

“This would just be an area that they could utilize to just hang out, sit and talk positively,” Hogan said.

Hogan presented two different renderings of the conversation area with the first version consisting of a 12-by-12-foot structure with a pitched roof that included four swings facing each other. The second version was an altered 12-by-16-foot structure with a slanted roof.

“I’m going to take these designs back to the youth,” Hogan said. “Since (the benches) are composite decking swings, they should be very durable to the outside and we can also get them in different colors. So, if the youth would like them to be the Bulldog colors versus the brown wood (we can)—we do want to make it inviting and a youth space.”

Although the exact design and appearance of the structure is still under discussion, Hogan’s request from the Council was merely for the permission necessary to construct the conversation area on city property once those determinations were made.

She also clarified that the money for the construction of the project is already included in Impact Montevallo’s budget and therefore no additional financial assistance is being requested from the city.

The motion to approve the project was accepted and passed unanimously by the Council.