Is it time to finally turn Beaufort’s underused Southside Park into something special?

Cars were lined from entrance to exit at Southside Park in Mossy Oaks in advance of Hurricane Florence last week.

As the main pickup location for sandbags, at least the park was finally put to good use, though better ideas will hopefully soon be coming.

Driving by the park on either Southside Boulevard or Battery Creek Road, you might never know what the park once had been. Long gone are any imprints or equipment left by the previous owner, Beaufort Jasper Water and Sewer Authority. All that remains — and has for years — is the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade.

Since the city of Beaufort has owned the property (it reverted to city ownership when BJWSA vacated the premises), a dog park has been added in one fenced-in section and a walking trail lines the property, but not much in the way of human amenities is in sight.

That could and should soon change.

A survey was sent several weeks ago to residents of the Mossy Oaks neighborhood asking for feedback on what kind of park this acreage should be. This neighborhood, even loosely defined to include residential areas from the Port Royal boundary to the Beaufort Memorial Hospital campus, is a large section of the city whose residents go elsewhere in town for play. Waterfront Park is perhaps the height of other city parks, but Pigeon Point Park is miles ahead of what it used to be, and many other small parks owned by the city are well-maintained and used.

So what could Southside Park be?

The notion of a community park always includes some kind of gazebo or bandstand, so let’s go ahead and say that comes with the design.

But what else?

Will it be a Burton Wells-type of athletic complex?

Several sections of playground equipment for toddlers through teens?

A designated theater for outdoor movies or performances?

A place for a farmer’s market or food truck festival?

Those are some of the questions the survey aimed to address. The results of the survey — discussed this week in a Beaufort City Council work session — are a very small indicator of what the neighborhood wants to see. While over 2,200 surveys were sent out, only several hundred were returned. That in itself is a disheartening fact since over half of the 2,200-plus residents have children at home who could benefit from a park.

Still, the main consensus from those who returned the survey was that, while the issues of park cleanliness, sufficient parking, adequate lighting and keeping vandalism at a minimum are current concerns, none of them outweigh the need for something more active to happen in the space.

Another unsurprising finding was that roughly 60 percent of responders never or rarely ever use the park as it is.

Right now, the large, open fields are conducive to watching sunsets and hitting baseballs as hard as you can. Heck, the Six Million Dollar Man could kick a football and never come close to hitting so much as a swing set. Unless you want to fly a drone or work on your golf swing, there’s not much incentive to use the park in its current state.

Of course, improvements cost money, and some kind of public/private venture is not out of the realm. Holy Trinity Classical Christian School’s track team currently uses the Southside Park trail for practice, and with Beaufort Middle School and Mossy Oaks Elementary both nearby, there are certainly opportunities.

That is the key word, after all. Entire generations have passed with not much progress. It’s past the point of worrying about whether the neighborhood will come together for a community park or which constituents feel neglected.

This is an opportunity for something good and permanent to come out of something underused and overlooked.

The survey and commendable work by the city planning department is a good step.

The next steps might be the ones that lead to a children’s slide.