Rhea Acharya

What benefits do you hope these changes will have on the community?

“I think that anytime we look at making any improvements to the park system, in general, it’s important to understand the needs and wants of the community. What do I think they’re going to benefit from this? Improved infrastructure, better support amenities for the infrastructure that’s in place and just better parks in general, more opportunity to get out and enjoy the existing facilities and parks that we have but also more opportunity for families to spend a day in a park and be outside and do things together. I think that’s one of the huge benefits of these different projects.”

How did you guys identify that changes needed to be made?

“All of that was done through the master planning process, so the five-year master plan that I talked about earlier that was extremely important in us identifying some of the changes that we needed to make to our existing infrastructure. The bonds or the funding we’re receiving just helps us expedite making the improvements sooner than we would originally been able to do.”

Will construction interfere with surrounding roads?

“That’s why we try to do it in two phases so we’re doing it in two phases just for the sheer factor of — especially when it comes to things like the splash pads and stuff — so we have three splash pads in Carmel it’s extremely important for us to phase things in a manner that allows us to have at least two of those amenities open at all times but so there will obviously be some park closures but no major road closures. None of the construction that we typically do in our parks impedes upon the normal ebb and flow of the traffic that surrounds the park but we’ll definitely have to do some park closures and cordon off some stuff as we’re moving amenities around and making infrastructure improvements to keep the community safe. We always make sure, safety is extremely important so we make sure you know we have stuff cordoned off the way that it needs to be.”