Victoria Wants Its Duck Pond Back
The duck pond at Riverside Park has been closed to the public since 2018. One look at the video footage above that features the park after Hurricane Harvey may remind folks why access to this area has been closed for some time.
Thankfully, talk of restoring the duck pond is happening among the Victoria city council members at this Tuesday's meeting. Morgan Theophil with the Victoria Advocate did a great piece recapping the timeline from the flood to the discovery of conditions that made it impossible to just fix the sidewalks and still call the pond safe. You can see how close the river erosion came to the road and the duck pond in the video above.
Moving forward the city council will review a couple of different design options for the duck pond. According to the Advocate, the cost of the renovations could total as high as 1.5 million dollars. Option 1 would pretty much keep the pond the same and would include a gazebo and new subsurface jets would be added to up the circulation of the pond. Option 2 expands the pond taking the island and gazebo out of the question altogether.
Even if a plan is selected and approved at Tuesday's meeting, it will take time for the project to be mapped out. The upside is that we may be closer to getting the duck pond back at Riverside. I'm told it was a fun place for families to go while visiting the park. If you ever had family members take you to the park as a kid, didn't all the best parks have a duck pond? Just sayin'! Maybe we can go make our own videos once the duck pond is safe and ready for visitors.