The City of Danville held a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday for the new Westmoreland Park. The park is located at the same site as the former Westmoreland school.

Danville native and 16-year NBA veteran Johnny Newman was in attendance at the groundbreaking and spoke on the importance of the park.

“This is a wonderful project, I went to school in all three of those buildings. Played flag football out here, ran, got beat up out here, the whole nine. So, it’s a great project and I hope we can do this for our youth for many years,” said Newman.

Clyde McCoy with the Westmoreland Neighborhood Organization, discussed how the idea for the project came about.

“A person that’s real dear to us, that’s not here now, Miss Norma Brower, she came to us and we talked about it and I said ‘Norma wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk to the city about the park being on the Westmoreland field’ and it was a situation where we went to Wendy and she suggested a $25,000 make it happen grant and that got us rolling,” said McCoy.

In 2016 the Westmoreland Neighborhood Organization began working with the City of Danville and Danville Regional Foundation to improve the playground and shelter facilities on the former Westmoreland School property to better accommodate neighborhood recreation needs and special neighborhood events. 

In January 2017, professional landscape architect, Site Collaborative, was engaged to work with neighborhood stakeholders to develop a park program, master plan, and preliminary costs for improvements on the property. 

The Westmoreland Neighborhood Organization continued fundraising efforts and thanks to the generosity of Danville Regional Foundation, the City of Danville,, and many other foundations, corporations, and individual donors, contracts have been awarded and construction is set to begin this winter.

The park is slated to include basketball courts, a play area, walking path, and more.