Improvements continue to be made to Portage’s Founders Square, with the latest $1 million going toward making the space more attractive for farmers markets and other events.
Planning and Community Development Director Tom Cherry pointed to additional concrete work for vendor trucks and booths as well as walkways for visitors as among the additions.
There’s also more lighting and electrical access for vendors, replacing the need for generators. “We plan on putting more in for safety reasons,” Cherry said on Friday, June 7, but they’re expensive.
Extensive landscaping is part of the work recently completed, too.
Mayor Austin Bonta looked around at the recent farmers market there and all the people who had come to the city for it.
“I still remember when this was a big woods,” he said.
“There was barbed wire around the water tower,” Bonta said. Then a splash pad was installed, bringing people to the new downtown the city has been creating under the last several mayors.
Holladay Properties built mixed-use structures that offer commercial space on the first floor and residential on the upper floors. Now people who visit the accessible playground and other amenities at Founders Square can visit restaurants there, too.
Under a former mayor, a new fire station was built there and the building once envisioned as housing college classrooms is now a police station.
“I like our City Hall,” another fixture downtown, Bonta said. It was extensively remodeled under his predecessor, Sue Lynch.
Portage’s Founders Square, pictured on Friday, June 7, 2024, has seen a host of improvements in recent years. The latest is a beer garden with a permanent fence rather than orange webbing, something that makes former Mayor Sue Lynch prouder of her city. (Doug Ross/for Post-Tribune)
Portage is becoming a more pedestrian-friendly city with additional sidewalks and more reasons to walk around the downtown, Bonta noted. “The more stuff you have, the more people are coming weekly here” for farmers markets, he said.
“I can come back every week to buy vegetables. I can come back every week to buy produce,” Bonta said. “It’s a dream come true.”
Lynch shared that dream. She’s especially proud of the new beer garden space, which has a permanent metal fence and not gaudy orange webbing surrounding it, drooping for days after an event.
The event space came together during Lynch’s administration. The city took out a roadway that cut through the north and south sections of the park and made it more suitable for events. Children can now traverse the park without worrying about traffic going through it.
Lynch wishes the park would have flowers in hanging baskets like it used to. Her predecessor, John Cannon, was in office only a short time but was responsible for putting in the baskets, she said.
Without a handy water supply or a water truck for the parks department to use, there wasn’t a good way to water the plants, Lynch noted. That’s why it’s so important to look at the big picture when planning projects.
The improvements recently completed at Founders Square were begun during her term in office.
Bonta sees events at Founders Square as attracting people to the city. “It lets people know this is a busy area,” he said, and not just during special events.
“We picture the mall and the square as connected like a barbell,” Bonta said. The Redevelopment Commission is planning to extend the energy and improvements Founders Square is now experiencing to the Portage Mall area with infrastructure work planned there as well.
Beyond the mall are some baseball fields purchased by the city under Lynch’s tenure.
“I’m really excited about the youth sports we’re investing in,” Bonta said. The city plans to hire a new park superintendent soon after a lengthy search.
One of the things the COVID-19 pandemic broke was youth sports. Kids were forced to stay inside. “We’re interested in helping kids learn to play outside again,” Bonta said.
“Portage really is a summer city. It just comes to life with the energy here,” he said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
