Groundbreaking ceremony held for Macon's Filmore Thomas Recreation Area
About a dozen members of a Macon community activist's family witnessed Wednesday's groundbreaking of a park named in his honor.
About 40 others, including Macon-Bibb County leaders, joined the family of Filmore Thomas for the ceremony marking the start of construction of the Filmore Thomas Recreation Area. For the past 30 years or so, there has been talk of turning the Log Cabin site into a park, and now it's surreal to see it actually happening, said Harold Thomas, son of the park's namesake.
He remembers his father coming home with petitions requesting the local government pave streets and put up lights in the Bellevue neighborhood. The elder Thomas also played a role in the Macon bus boycott in 1962.
"On behalf of all of us, I want to give my sincere thanks and appreciation especially for the Bellevue Concerned Citizens group ... for naming the park after my father," Harold Thomas said.
The $1.7 million project will add walking trails, pavilions, two basketball courts, a splash pad, parking, benches and more. The park will be on the site of the former Durr's Lake that's now just a small stream. The land was once home to a skating rink and bowling alley, which have been demolished for years.
The project is being financed through the special purpose local option sales tax that Bibb County voters approved in 2011. Seven years earlier, voters narrowly turned down a SPLOST that would have funded the park.
One of the proponents of the park who was credited Wednesday was Merritt Johnson, a longtime member of the Bellevue neighborhood group. Johnson led the effort to push for the park in 1996, about two decades after Bellevue Concerned Citizens began its campaign for it.
Over the past couple of years, Commissioner Al Tillman has said he has made the park and a nearby Log Cabin road improvement project a priority for residents there.
He described the park plans as "top of the line" and credited Macon-Bibb County officials and residents of the area with getting both projects off the ground.
Tillman has said he would like to see future SPLOST money used to build an indoor facility at Filmore Thomas.
"Some people say it's 20 years, been 30 years in the making, and now Filmore Thomas is about to be built and we're all so excited," he said.
The project is scheduled to take about eight months to complete, said Walter Stafford, president of Stafford Builders Group in Macon.
"The first work will be getting the erosion control better before we start disturbing dirt," he said. "Something has to be in place to catch the runoff."
Mayor Robert Reichert said that for too long the neighborhood's residents heard "plans, projections and promises" about the park.
"They say patience is a virtue, and I know the residents of the Bellevue community are virtuous people because they have so been patiently waiting for today," he said.
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Stanley Dunlap, call 744-4623 or find him on Twitter @stan_telegraph.
This story was originally published December 16, 2015 at 10:33 PM with the headline "Groundbreaking ceremony held for Macon's Filmore Thomas Recreation Area ."