By Carol Cole
The Norman Transcript

Northwest Norman residents will finally have a community park they can call their own, thanks to a women's estate gift to the University of OKlahoma Foundation and her desire to create a park in the area.

The Norman City Council approved the purchase of the 149-acre Ruby Grant Farm from the foundation at Tuesday's meeting for $750,000. The most recent apprasial of the land was $2 million in 2005.

The Grant farmland is west of Interstate 35, south of Franklin ROad, east of 36th Avenue NW and north of All Saints School.

"This is awesome, what we are going to have as a city," said Jeff Marley of the Norman Parks Board at the council meeting. "We need this."

Parks Director Jud Foster wrote in a memorandum to council that Norman's 2020 and 2025 Land Use and Transportation Plans identify the area as best suited for a community park site. The city of Norman is about 200 acres short on park acreage by national standards.

Negotiations had been going on t acquire the farmland since 1999. The funds will come from the city's capital improvements fund.

"This is pretty amazing," said Ward 8 councilmember Mandy Haws, who was credited by other councilmembers for working tenaciously on the deal for the past two years.

"The important thing is that the city has a very small window of opportunity to purchase this for a price."

Haws said Ruby Grant protected her land to the best of her ability, "just ask the sheriff."

She read an e-mail that asked that she honor the intentions of the benefactor to benefit Norman with a park.

The community park that is the farthest west is Andrews Park in central Norman, although it is not a community park in the truest sense. The Westwood golf, tennis and water park facility at Robinson Street east of 24th Avenue NW is dedicated to special uses.

Other community parks are Reaves Park on Jenkins Avenue and Constitution Street and Griffin Park at Alameda Street and 12th Avenue NE.

"In general, a community park is a park that is intended for use and designed for use by the entire community," Foster said, including parking and restrooms. "It's a park that anyone in the community can use-it's a destination place."

He said the land has great visibility from the interstate and a variety of features including some flat and open areas, rolling terrain aling with a couple of ponds and creeks.

"It's a beautiful piece of property. It's got a lot of variety," Foster said.

Three primary convenants are included in the Ruby Grant Farm purchase. Those are that the property must be used for public park and recreation purposes; that the property be named the Ruby Grant Community Park;

And after closing, the city will enter into good faith discussions with the University of Oklahoma athletic department concerning the inclusion of cross country track facilities on a portion of the property. If they are deemed feasible, the facilities would be constructed and maintained by the university and be available for use by the general public.

The public's wishes would be factored into creating a master plan for the park.

"What we intend to do would be to go through a public input process to get input process to get input on the various components that the citizens want or don't want," Foster said.

He said ball parks, specifically practice fields, are frequent requests from the public, as are walking and jogging trails.

"I would expect those to be a high priority from the community," Foster said. "Typically what we hear is we want places to walk and jog and run'...But I don't want it ti sound like the park is designed already-because it isn't."

Ward 4 councilmember Cindy Rosenthal and Ward 5 councilmember Rachel Butler expressed desires that a portion of th epark be preserved in its natural prairie state.