On Tuesday, 7-year-old Vincent Robles was playing in Callaghan Park in downtown Watsonville, clambering over the play structures and going up and down the slide.
But what he really wanted, his mother Jessica said, was to go back to Ramsay Park, with its big slide.
“He loves it there,” she said.
Vincent will have about another year to wait. The park is in the midst of the Ramsay Park Renaissance Project, a massive $34.6 million endeavor that will include several new features.
This includes several winding trails, picnic areas, a dog park, a natural turf soccer field and a separate artificial turf field. Playgrounds for older and younger kids will feature the park’s famed long slide, along with a few smaller slides.
On Tuesday, Watsonville Parks and Community Services Bob Berry, who is project manager for the Ramsay Park Renaissance Project, gave a tour of the site for City Council members and other dignitaries. He estimates that construction will be completed in spring 2026.
The project was halted for seven months as the city negotiated with PG&E to remove a decommissioned gas line running under the park.
“Getting through that project was a bear,” Parks and Community Services Director Nick Calubaquib said.
Also changed are plans for the Nature Center, which was demolished earlier this year, and was slated to be rebuilt on the south side of the park.
But because the cost for the proposed center came in higher than estimated, it will be relocated inside the existing Community Center.
And the $1 million earmarked for the center will instead be used for a nature trail and other improvements in the south side of the park, Berry said.
The money for the Ramsay Park work was raised after Watsonville voters in 2022 approved Measure R, the half-cent sales tax within the city. The money raised by Measure R is also funding after-school and anti-gang programs, parks and Watsonville Slough trails, among other things.
But there is not enough money from the Measure R revenue to immediately pay for the Ramsay Park project, nor for an upgrade to the City Plaza Park, which includes improvements to the gazebo and landscaping.
So on Tuesday, the Watsonville City Council unanimously approved a plan to raise $12 million in lease from revenue bonds to fill the $8.5 million funding gap for Ramsay and $3.5 million for the plaza.
They would then use any legally available general funds, including Measure R revenues.The city is also paying for the projects using stimulus funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, which came during the Covid pandemic.
