Editor’s note: This article was published in Grand Traverse Scene magazine’s Summer I 2026 issue. Pick up a free copy at area hotels, visitor’s centers, chambers of commerce or at the Record-Eagle building at 1764 Forest Ridge Drive in Traverse City. Click here to read GT Scene in its entirety online.
It was a beautiful day, the first week in May, and sisters Franke, Reina and Eiza Snider were getting in their late-morning workouts at Civic Center Park in Traverse City.
Morning workouts for kids? Sure, let’s call it that.
After all, adolescent adventures such as running, jumping and pushing vigorously on thickly-piped resistance equipment — all the while grinning and giggling — will burn off calories and tone muscles for those who are 8, 6 and 4 years old, just as it does for their grown-up counterparts who might not be left grinning and giggling after similar exhausting effort.
It was during that first week in May that parks all across the Grand Traverse region and beyond were being awakened to their springtime yawnings. Picnic tables were being retrieved from their winter hiatus. Pathways carpeted with wood chips were being replenished with the same. Playground equipment was being repaired and repainted, if not outright replaced.
It was a week when the grinning, giggling Snider sisters — along with many others, young and old alike — either leisurely walked, assertively jogged, or flat-out ran the paved paths of the Civic Center Park, with some of them stopping here and there to stretch their muscles at one or more of the park’s brightly-painted fitness stations that acted as playground equipment to the aforementioned Franke, Reina and Eiza.
The county-maintained Civic Center Park shoulders the eastside of downtown Traverse City, while the city-owned Ashton Park shoulders its westside. Both community-pleasing parks have seen recent upgrades, and will continue to do so.
For another Grand Traverse County Park, Camp Greilick, this year will be one of rebirth after a long life of serving Boy Scouts, campers and many others over the past several decades.
Ashton Park playground gets a facelift
Michelle Hunt, director of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, said recent upgrades to the Ashton Park playground came after years of planning and patience
A quaint, shaded park located in the city’s historic Slabtown Neighborhood, Ashton Park and its nature-themed playground lie in the shadows of Willow Hill Elementary School. Weaving their way through the park are self-guiding walking trails that lead visitors through a quiet growth of maple, beech, oak, hemlock trees and more. In all, the city has over 30 park and recreational properties, including Ashton Park, Hickory Hills Ski Area,the Brown Bridge Quiet Area and others.
“The Ashton Park playground was part of the Brown Bridge Parks Improvement ballot measures that the citizens voted on in 2019,” Hunt said. “That project was on the list for upgrades and the idea was to put new playground equipment there. When the senior center was being designed, (that would include) lots of tree removals and the trees that were being removed were called black locusts.”
Black locust trees are medium-sized hardwood trees native to North America and northern Michigan. They’re appreciated for their fragrant white flowers and thorny branches.
“Black locust is what you might call a naturally-treated wood. You don’t have to pressure-treat it, and they’re very long lasting, three or four times pressure-treated lumber that’s used for boardwalks, fences, posts and building playgrounds,” Hunt said.
“So rather than having all the black locusts from the senior center be put into a woodchipper, we salvaged them, cut them to length and let them cure for a couple of years, and then we built the (Ashton Park) playground out of them. It was a real special project because we took trees that otherwise had to come out in order to put the new senior center in, and we saved them.”
The new senior center was completed in December 2024.
In regards to the Ashton Park playground design, Hunt said no plastic was used in its construction.
“It’s all organic, it’s all natural,” she said. “The playground is 95 percent black locust. We did two other features with pressure-treated lumber — a leaf slide and a little outdoor play table are the only two things we built without using the black locusts.”
The Brown Bridge Parks Improvement Fund, Hunt said, “… was created with the oil royalties that come from the Brown Bridge … and that money goes to fund park improvements … that goes every five years to the vote of the people and they tell us what they want to do with the money. So, in 2019, there was a project list and the citizens voted and Ashton Park was on it.”
This summer, the city parks and recreation department will be “… re-doing the city’s pickleball courts and tennis courts down at Slabtown Corner,” projects, she said, should be completed by the end of the summer, or early fall.
“We’re rebuilding the pickleball courts from the ground up,” she said. “The tennis courts will be surfaced because they’re in good shape,” Hunt said
Civic Center Park receives new track, fitness stations
Civic Center Park has a one-mile walking path that draws a million walkers and runners annually, and that is now fitted with a series of fitness stations, as well gravel alternatives to its paved pathways. The park’s outdoor amphitheater hosts concerts, and its youth and adult baseball and softball fields are always busy during the summer.
Looking back at 2025, Grand Traverse County Director of Parks and Recreation John Chase said “there were a lot of pieces to the project” his team carried out last year.
“We did a complete (asphalt) reconstruction of our one-mile walking track that surrounds our property,” Chase said of the work completed last year in Civic Center Park. “We also had a footbridge that went over Civic Center Drive next to Garfield Road, and so we replaced that footbridge as well.
“We added seven fitness stations all around the track. We’ve been seeing good activities with those, so those have been a fun addition to this park,” Chase said.
A parking lot was added to the park’s southern area.
“We had a dirt parking lot that served the southwest corner of the park, so we paved that parking lot and it makes the pavilion and the amphitheater parts of the park much more user friendly,” he said. “And in working with the Traverse City Track Club, (we added) a soft-running path. Sometimes, running on asphalt can be hard on the body and that soft-training surface can be easier on the body.”
Park officials will continue to make improvements to the park this year, Chase said.
“We have a restroom that’s well beyond its useful life and so we are really, really happy to be able to replace the restroom at the south end of the park,” he said. “This will serve the whole south end, it’ll serve the walking track and most specifically, it’ll serve the playground. We’re going to put three, individual, restroom stalls in this building and in addition we’ll have a garage there and a shop and it will be a place where our field crew and their equipment (can be located).
“We’ll also be putting in some shade structures at the Civic Center and at the bleachers area, and we are going to do those in the fall. And on top of that we’re also supporting all of our parks by interior directional signs to help you find your way when you’re in the park.”
Camp Greilick reopens with disc golf, human foosball
Park officials reopened Camp Greilick in December and held an open house on the property on May 8.
“We (want) people to come out and just experience the park — the disc golf course, explore the trails, experience the amenities on the property and try our human foosball.”
Human foosball?
“Imagine a court with cables that run perpendicular to the length of the court and you have people who are standing and holding on to the cables and when they move them from side-to-side, that moves the players, who can’t move up and down the court),” he said.
“The scouts put that in and we just thought that it’s a neat feature to have in the park, and so we had some volunteer groups who came in and helped to rebuild it.
“It’s definitely a neat addition, there’s no other parks in the area with a human foosball court,” he said.