Progress being made on City View Park in Dunbar

More promises made by a city that has not kept its promises for the last six years have some neighbors concerned about the future of their community.

• RELATED: Arsenic, other minerals may be back at old Dunbar sludge site

For years, children in this Dunbar community played at a Fort Myers toxic sludge site.

In 2019, the city told everyone that they would turn it into City View Park. Six years later, nothing has changed.

The goal for parks and recreation leaders in Fort Myers is to get the ball rolling on this park as early as spring.

They know it’s been a long time coming for neighbors who played on this site that had harmful materials in it for years.

The hope is to take a place that used to be a bad memory for some into one they want to go to.

There’s now progress on what was only known as a sight for sore eyes in Dunbar.

“I played in it from the age of 8 or 9 to the age of about 17 or 18,” said one resident.

Environmental reports show that it was also a site used for dumping lime sludge in a minority community in the 60s.

“We used to play in the woods, but we didn’t know we were playing on toxins. Now we know now,” said Jordon Brown.

After arsenic was cleaned up from the site in 2018-2019, neighbors were promised a park.

For years, advocates like Robert Short fought with city leaders about the need to make it happen.

“They were just not being treated fairly. It’s just something that the community needed. It’s a stable community,” said Short. “It’s obviously a community of mostly minorities, and I thought that the council was overlooking it. I thought it would carry more weight if somebody who didn’t live in Dunbar advocated for them.”

This is what that push from neighbors and those outside like short amounted to.

“We’re looking at having a pavilion, a walkable trail around the park and then a playground as well,” said parks and rec director Elgin Hicks.

Here’s the site plan for City View Park, which Hicks calls their top priority.

“All the sludge has been cleared out of that area, so we seem like we’re in a good space for that, so there’s no health concerns,” said Hicks. “Moving forward, we’ve done the due diligence to make sure that that wouldn’t happen, and we’re just ready to kind of make that a more vibrant neighborhood.”

In the November election, residents voted to back go bonds, which made this possible.

As part of the parks and rec master plan, the city plans to expand amenities across the city with funding up to $75 million.

They have a hearing on March 3 to validate the bonds and get some forward movement in making this park a reality.