Article published November 04, 2009
Point Place park gets face-lift aid
$5,000 will help old Willow Beach site
FUNDS FOR UPGRADES
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Cullen Park in Toledo’s Point Place received $5,000 for improvements yesterday from the UPS Foundation.
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By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Five thousand dollars won't buy the public much in today's economy. But yesterday, it brought some sorely needed love to Ed Cullen Park off 101st Street in Toledo's Point Place.
"It's a start. It's a start to a collaboration," Councilman Lindsay Webb said of the $5,000 check donated by the UPS Foundation to the city and the Ottawa River Kleanup Association Inc., which also calls itself ORKA.
Though few Toledoans today could tell you how to get to Cullen Park, it once was a bustling little amusement park when it was known as the Willow Beach resort in the 1930s and '40s.
It had a dance hall and roller-skating rink until 1950.
By 1956, Willow Beach was cited in a newspaper article as one of the biggest eyesores in the city park system.
Since the 1950s, it has been used as a boat launch - although for years, only one of the two ramps has been accessible to pleasure craft because of silt.The other ramp will remain open only for canoes, kayaks, and other small boats unless the city can come up with its share of matching funds to dredge out the silt.
The 58-year-old UPS Foundation distributes millions of dollars in grants worldwide. It provided seed money for a Cullen Park face-lift after being approached by Randy Baumker, a Point Place resident, UPS truck driver, and ORKA member.
Jo Ramlow, a foundation spokesman who presented the check, said the money could be used to buy some park benches and Do Not Litter signs, as well as for a general spruce-up of the park. That may include the removal of phragmites, a common reed, she said.
Ms. Webb and Mike Cassidy, ORKA president, said the park has great potential for a comeback, especially given its close proximity to Maumee Bay and the popularity of fishing for walleye and yellow perch.
The park is near a popular fishing hole where a Toledo man, Shondale Galloway, 33, and his son, Shondale Galloway II, 12, accidentally drowned a little more than a year ago.
They were last seen standing chest-deep in the bay, casting their fishing lines out in the area between Grassy Island and Point Place.
Authorities have said they may have fallen off a sand bar near the tip of the peninsula that extends off Cullen Park, not knowing about a drop-off.
Ms. Webb said two of her grandparents met at Cullen Park.
She said she would like to have future revenue collected for boat launches put into a special trust for the park rather than getting mixed into the city's general fund.
"Because of budget constraints, we haven't been able to make the investment in the park that we would like," Ms. Webb said.
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