When I first heard about Toledo being awarded the Solheim Cup professional golf tournament last year my interest was piqued, but it was the accompanying downtown improvements that really got me excited. It’s truly not often that Toledo gets an overhaul. And even when it does, the process moves like molasses and enthusiasm is hard to maintain all the way through the ribbon cuttings. That’s why what’s happening this time around Summit Street is so special.
For the purpose of this post, “around Summit Street” means Levis park. The oft-forgotten downtown pocket park is mostly relegated to local office worker foot traffic and the lovely lunch truck Thursdays that so many are no doubt missing in 2020. Thanks to the boon coming along with the Solheim Cup, Levis Square has quietly been transformed this summer into a place worth visiting for all of the city. New paving, lighting, landscaping, and a cool new entry archway have been added around the existing fountains and it’s starting to feel like an entirely new park!
I’ve actually documented a lot of the progress down here since the start of this year and as I’ve been looking for things to start writing about anyways, I think I’ve now got an ice breaker for my own blog. I’m a huge fan of Toledo and I have always wanted the best for it. This is progress we can see and feel and it couldn’t have come at a better time than now when so many of us are searching for some positivity in our community. In that spirit my next post(or two) will be about the upcoming Glass City Metropark where I will address a lot of the issues I’ve had with the languished East Side and why I think this new park will be the catalyst the forgotten side of the Maumee River needs to start a roaring comeback in the years to come.
