Photo by Cameron Carr
Beulah Park developer Pat Kelley cuts the Park Street extension ribbon
Grove City kicked off a celebration of the city’s 170th anniversary with the dedication of an extension to Park Street. That extension holds symbolic weight to the city’s past as it connects one of the oldest subdivisions in Grove City to its newest subdivision, Beulah Park.
The dedication and opening event featured comments by Mayor Richard L. “Ike” Stage and others in front of that older subdivision as they looked out onto the Park Street extension into Beulah Park. Stage delivered his remarks from atop a horse-drawn carriage, emphasizing the historical significance.
Pat Kelley, president of Falco, Smith & Kelley Ltd., the Beulah Park developer, noted the dedication as a celebration of more than $30 million in public infrastructure including four miles of new roadway, over 8,000 lineal feet of single-living streets surrounding Beulah Park’s central park and improvements to Southwest Boulevard.
Kelley said the extension was an important part of making Beulah Park one of central Ohio’s most exciting new multi-use developments.
“You can’t duplicate the ingredients that make this so special,” he said. “It’s integrating the old and the new in a seamless connection.”
Photo by Cameron Carr
Mayor Stage speaks at the dedication
The Park Street extension also provides an additional route toward the new Beulah Park Middle School, opening at 3811 Southwest Blvd. this summer. That 119,000-square-foot building will house some-800 seventh and eighth grade students.
South-Western City School District Superintendent Bill Wise credited the city and developers flexibility and consideration in helping to make the school possible.
“Grove City’s a very special place and it’s all because of partnership,” Wise said.
He also noted that Beulah Park Middle School will have more science labs than most of the district’s middle school’s combined.
Grove City founder William Foster Breck also made an appearance in the form of actor Glen Garcia. He recalled setting aside three groves of walnut trees that earned the town its name. He also noted that, at that time, Grove City contained only three named streets, including School Street, which is now known as Park Street.
The dedication concluded with Kelley cutting the ribbon before a parade of city vehicles – including Stage’s carriage and a school bus with incoming Beulah Park students – drove on the newly extended street.
Read more about Grove City in the latest issue of Discover Grove City.
Cameron Carr is and editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at ccarr@cityscenemediagroup.com.
