Fredericksburg developing Riverside into a “smart” park

Fredericksburg is looking to turn the city’s new Riverside Park into a “smart” park.

The city will enter a partnership with the Center for Innovative Technology to bring smart technology that would be a feature of the new park when it opens to the public next year.

The Center for Innovative Technology invested $75,000 into the park. The first phase includes public wi-fi and security cameras for the park. The second phase of tech improvements could include a digital information kiosk, a public performance stage, environmental sensors for air quality and river flooding, and sensors for parking availability and crowd counts. The second round of technology upgrades is dependent upon the strength of the smart infrastructure.

Located along Sophia Street in Downtown Fredericksburg, Riverside Park has been a priority project of the city for over a decade. In addition to to the smart technology upgrades, the city is considering creating a bankside trail that would lead from a new multi-use bike path being built on a new Chatham Bridge over the Rappahannock River, which links the city to Stafford County, to the park — an idea that has been floating about among city council members since 1994.

The new portion of the trail is estimated to cost $1.3 million and would fill a gap in that network in the Rappahannock Trail which this project hopes to fill in and run from the bridge into the new park.

While much has to be done in terms of approvals, applications, and permitting the city is already looking at ways to cut costs on this trail project. One possibility presented was by using the stone currently in use by the bridge’s construction crews since after the project’s completion it would all have to be hauled away. The stones are used as temporary platforms for the crews and construction equipment doing work on the bridge.

The city could save as much $250,000 by using the construction stones from Chatham Bridge.