Riverfront Foundation recommends naming Sterling’s new riverfront park to honor wire mill

STERLING — Sterling’s Riverfront Foundation presented its recommendation Monday night for naming rights to the city’s new riverfront park.

Riverfront Foundation Co-Chairman Terry McGuire said the foundation would like to honor the project’s largest donor by recommending their wishes to name the park “The Northwestern Steel and Wire Riverfront Park.”

“The park is going to be built on what was the Northwestern Steel and Wire grounds,” McGuire said during Monday night’s Sterling City Council meeting. “A lot of the components of the park honor the steel and hardware capital of the country and Sterling. So, we thought that would be a nice tie-in. In terms of the largest donor, with the background that they have with Northwestern Steel and Wire, they thought it would be fitting and appropriate for the community. Northwestern Steel and Wire helped build Sterling and gave a lot of jobs to a lot of people, and gave a lot of recognition to the city.”

The donor was not named during the City Council meeting.

No action was taken regarding the park’s official naming and City Attorney Tim Zollinger said the City Council will need to take the recommendation and create a formal resolution that will be voted on at a later date should they choose to go with the name.

McGuire also presented several mock-up images of potential designs for the park’s donor wall.

“We will have historical images on the left-hand side,” McGuire said. “We want to show what the ground was years and years ago. In the center, what the city has done to remediate that land and to improve that land, to get it to the point where we could build a park there. And then on the right-hand side will be some City of Sterling images for people that come in and enjoy the park.”

The yet-to-be-named park at the former Northwestern Steel and Wire Mill site will include a multiage, accessible playground, a splash pad, an ice skating ribbon, a plaza, park shelter, stage facility and restrooms.

The playground and splash pad are expected to be available by late June, and phases two and three have now been consolidated to include completion of the amphitheater, ice skating ribbon and parking lots later this year.

The park is part of the city’s $300 million multiphase Riverfront Reimagined project.

In addition to the city’s new riverfront park, the Riverfront Reimagined plan could include worker apartments, a hotel and events center, and a rooftop bar/restaurant for the four buildings at the Lawrence site. That could be followed by market-rate apartments, a fitness center and yet-to-be-determined uses of the National Manufacturing site.