OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Stanley Nature Park, a 40 acre piece of undeveloped park land is at the center of a heated battle. Should the land go to the Blue Valley School District to be made into ball parks, a parking lot, and a nature study area or should it continue to be a patch of green in the city?
Tuesday night, a crowd packed a public hearing for the debate.
“We don’t feel like anybody was really listening to us. I think they discounted us as a group,” said Larry Greenberg. Greenberg was part of a group of park supporters who held up signs protesting the land trade between the district and the parks department. Greenberg and others in his group say Stanley Nature Park is a quiet gem in the middle of the city.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find anything like it in the entire metro area,” he said.
The Blue Valley School District offered Johnson County Parks and Recreation 60 acres of other land to be made into streamway parks in order to have on-campus sports fields where Stanley Park currently is. Vicky Heston prays the trade happens.
“She was 15, and two of her teammates lost their lives too, so I understand their love for the nature center, but our love for our children should be the priority,” Heston said.
Fourteen years ago, Vicky’s daughter, Jennifer DeFranco, was killed in a car crash on her way from Blue Valley High School to a softball game. It was a crash she says would have been avoided with fields on school grounds.
She says for fourteen years she’s hoped other families don’t have to worry about their kids going off school grounds for a simple game.
Both sides are fueled by passion, and they vow to fight until a resolution is found, but without a decision yet, that fight will continue.