The City of Fort Morgan wants your input on the design of a band shell at City Park. The workshop and open house are set for next Monday, March 14 at 5:30 p.m. The band shell would be part of the city's plans for a new amphitheater at the park. Officials say the park had a band shell in the past, before it fell into disrepair. Fort Morgan City Council committed some funding to the project last year.
(from the city's website)
The open house on Monday will give community members a progress report on conceptual design work for the outdoor amphitheater. The design consultants, Semple Brown Design, will show alternative design proposals, discuss acoustical and utility considerations, and solicit public feedback on the design work to date.
The workshop will start at 5:30 p.m. at the Fort Morgan Library/Museum. There will be no formal presentations, but residents can view the design concepts and offer their input.
City Park has been a vital and vibrant element of downtown life since the city was first platted in 1884. The park was first used in 1893 when a group of citizens cleared weeds and rocks to play baseball on the site just north of the city’s central business district.
Soon after the turn of the last century, a group of Fort Morgan businessmen formed an improvement association to formalize the park. The ground was cleared, sidewalks were laid in a diagonal pattern and 100 trees were planted and watered daily by hand. A gazebo was later built, where the city band played music in the park during the summer months. Famed Big Band leader Glenn Miller was a member of the city band for a time while in high school, and the concert series became a popular pastime for both residents and visitors.
After seeing how the concerts fostered a sense of community and drew people to the commercial district, residents formed a stadium association to build a bigger band shell in the eastern part of the park. For the next 25 years, concerts on the stadium stage and in the gazebo drew large crowds to the park twice a week, and many in the audiences frequented the soda fountains in downtown drug stores and other businesses after the shows.
In 1914 the City Council approved building the Carnegie Library at the north end of City Park, because it had become such a popular gathering place for the entire community. When the library opened the following year, City Park became Fort Morgan’s new cultural center.
By the 1950s and ’60s, radio and television had replaced the band concerts as primary forms of entertainment, and the city replaced the deteriorating gazebo and the stadium with a portable stage. City Park, however, remains a unique place in the heart of the city for residents to gather and enjoy, and the revived Thursday in the Park concert series has once again fostered a feeling of fellowship and attracted many people to the downtown area on summer evenings.
It is the intention of the band shell committee to achieve a design for a new amphitheater that reflects the historical and cultural significance of City Park to the community.
Residents are encouraged to take the time to come to Monday’s workshop, and to support the effort to create a facility that will recall and sustain the good times that City Park and its summer evening concerts have always provided to Fort Morgan.
