The planned Falls Landing project in Jeffersonville will serve a dual purpose. It is the site of an underground retention tank to alleviate flooding, and a planned 2-acre lawn which will feature pavilions, pathways and decorative lighting. Courtesy City of Jeffersonville
JEFFERSONVILLE — The City of Jeffersonville is developing a project to combine functionality with green space.
The city will soon begin work on Falls Landing, a 2-acre lawn area between 9th Street, Indiana Avenue and Ohio Avenue. The park will include colorful pavilions, landscaping, sculpture gardens, pedestrian pathways and decorative lighting.
On Thursday, the City of Jeffersonville released renderings for the park. The open lawn will be built on the site of underground retention tanks the city installed to mitigate flooding in downtown Jeffersonville after rainfalls.
Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore expects the construction of Falls Landing to begin in the next 45 days, and the project should be complete by the fall.
The $2.5 million project comes from tax increment financing (TIF) dollars and does not use property taxes, Moore said. The Jeffersonville Redevelopment Commission approved the project.
Moore said the space will tie together The Depot, the NoCo Arts & Cultural District and the commercial corridor at Jeffersonville Gateway.
“We’re looking to have a park-like setting [and] picnic areas — someplace you could take your lunch and relax under some shade,” he said. “It’s going to be kind of an artsy feel with a lot of trees, a lot of landscape. I think it’s going to be a real impressive view if you’re coming into the city off Interstate 65 looking down on that area.”
The mayor emphasizes that structures for housing or businesses could not be placed over the underground tanks, but it was well-suited for open green space.
“The park is kind of a dual purpose,” he said. “It’s where all the flooding water goes downtown and gets slowly released once the heavy rains are over, but above ground is going to be a park.”
Falls Landing would be ideal for weekend art fairs, Moore said.
“We’ve used one of the streets down there in front of the arts and cultural district in the past for something like this, but I kind of thought this could be a more permanent home for some weekend events where we could just get a collection of artists and spread them out around the park.”
Moore said the purpose of the NoCo district was to “pull people a little further into the city,” beyond the Big Four Bridge and riverfront area, and Falls Landing will help expand that vision.
“This is going to be a little venture into an arts village,” he said. “Every little area of the city’s got something different, and this was an area of the city that for a long time was neglected before we came in. We just saw an opportunity to put a new face on something and give it a little creativity and a little beauty.”
The city also recently announced the upcoming development of 16 pickleball courts at Lottie Oglesby Park near Ewing Lane. The development will feature lighted courts, a picnic pavilion with restrooms, walking trails and a playground.
Pickleball
Moore said the park has been “underutilized” for years, and he saw a demand in the city for additional pickleball courts.
“We’ve put pickleball courts by the old Boys & Girls Club in Claysburg, and they’ve been used quite a bit, and there’s actually more demand for pickleball courts in the four we’ve got there,” he said. “Looking into some other communities around Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, we found that 16 courts [are] kind of a magic number if you’re ever wanting to hold some tournaments or anything.”
The pickleball courts will also use TIF funds, but the exact cost has not been determined, Moore said. He expects the project to begin in the next couple of months after the architectural renderings are done. The project will likely finish in the spring of next year.
As the city progresses with outdoor recreation spaces, he said the goal is for Jeffersonville to be “a city that’s friendly to families.”
“You look around our city and everything we’ve done for the past 11 and a half years — we’ve put a very heavy emphasis on quality of life and building family parks,” Moore said. “The more desirable your city is to families, the more you’re going to grow, the more you’re going to have businesses move to Jeffersonville.”
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