Stansbury Park’s “front porch” is getting finishing touches on its redesign as part of a series of improvements to the community.
Twin waterfalls, flanking the Stansbury Park monolith on the east entrance of Stansbury Parkway, are set to go on over Thanksgiving weekend, said Randall Jones, manager of the Stansbury Service Agency.
“We’re excited to finally have it done,” he said. “We’re hoping the weather holds so we can get water running through it before we have to shut it down for winter.”
The project is part of a $200,000 undertaking to renovate the entryway and replace the community’s iconic poplars, which were cut down earlier this year after they started dying of disease and old age, Jones said.
“The thing that precipitated it [the project] was the trees were becoming sick and they were starting to blow over in the wind, which was creating a dangerous situation for people,” he said. “Rather than piece it, we thought it would be better to take them out and replace them with a legacy tree.”
At the entrance, Columnar English Oaks will take the place of the poplar, keeping a similar shape but having a much longer lifespan — up to 150 years, rather than about 20, Jones said. Along the greenspace, London Plain Sycamore will be planted, he said, which, though not keeping the same pillar-like look of the poplars, will contribute to the community’s ambiance.
“It will give that Salt Lake Avenues look when it’s mature,” he said.
The twin waterfalls, a reference to the Twin Springs moniker of the area from pioneer times, will hopefully be turned on Wednesday, Jones said. The rest of the project will continue to be worked on in the spring, culminating with a community Arbor Day celebration to plant 100 London Plain Sycamores.
In addition to the English Oaks and the waterfalls, more landscaping will be done around the entryway, he said, a redesign that has been attempted in the past with mixed results.
“We’ve taken several stabs at it but it’s never looked very good,” Jones said. “We wanted to keep the monolith because that’s a piece of Stansbury history. This is the design that worked. This is our front porch and we want it to look nice for people to come to Stansbury. We want it to reflect how we feel about our community.”