Harbor Drive Wellness Park ribbon cutting June 4

A ribbon-cutting will be held for a $1.2 million park in Lake Ridge on Saturday, June 4, at 11 a.m.

From 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., the park will have fitness demonstrations and giveaways.

The Harbor Drive Wellness Park sits on what was an underutilized commuter lot next to the Tacketts Mill shopping center at 13030 Harbor Drive. A park is a place for the community to congregate and exercise.

Residents were allowed to begin using the park on December 15, 2021. County leaders used multiple funding sources for the project, including proffer funds from various developers: more than a half-million dollars from the May’s Quarter development behind the county government center in Woodbridge and about $30,000 from two other nearby properties.

Kaiser Permanente, which is building a new campus at Minnieville and Caton Hill roads bout a mile from the park, also gave $100,000 to the county for park construction.

“The new Harbor Drive Wellness Park is a model to be celebrated on multiple fronts. First, it showcases a great partnership between our county government and the private sector through the collaboration we’ve had with Kaiser Permanente. It is also a great example of revitalization of previously developed land, transforming an unused commuter lot with whimsical structures, a trail, and native plants,” penned Occoquan District Supervisor Kenny Boddye in an email statement to PLN in December 2021.

The park is the brainchild of Boddye’s predecessor, Supervisor Ruth Anderson, a member of the Board of County Supervisors from 2016 to 2019. Anderson suggested converting the underused commuter lot into a park in 2017.

Anderson kickstarted the project with about $10,000 of unspent funds allocated to her office. In 2018, the county government kicked in $700,000 to advance the project and would later infuse about a half-million more to cover the park’s budget shortfall.

In March 2019, the Board of County Supervisors approved a rezoning, clearing the way for the new 335,000 square-foot space now occupied by Kaiser Permanente. Now known as the Caton Hill Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente reports the facility will open sometime next year.