A new park will be built downtown that will be both student and family friendly and will serve as Statesboro’s signature park.

“We want it to be a place where students can come and get into the downtown area,” Allen Muldrew, director of the Downtown Statesboro Development Authority, said. “We also want to provide a regional venue for activity, family and student friendly. It will be a new place for the farmers’ market and we’ll host a Southern Day, where the president will come and speak.”

“We’re trying to make a signature park for Statesboro, something that gives us an identity and makes us unique, and give a quality-of-life improvement,” Muldrew said.

“We want to have it open to organizations, families and groups, like having a pavilion people could use for meetings,” Muldrew said.

Among other things, the park will feature an amphitheater and fountains, Muldrew said.

“We’re looking at parks that have fountains and other decorations, like Rome, and taking cues from them,” Muldrew said.

“It’s still in the planning stages. We’ll probably put a group together to get input on landscape and decoration and architecture, and having the farmers market,” Muldrew said.

One of the locations where the park could potentially be built is where the old seafood market now stands, by the railroad track on East Main Street, Muldrew said.

Having the park would also help Statesboro’s real estate business, Muldrew said.

“It will help the real estate too, because property around a park is always more valuable,” Muldrew said. “Making this park could also have an effect on downtown. People would want to renovate their building to make them look nicer.”

“We want it to increase quality of life. It also helps if you’ve got businesses looking. When you’re competing with other areas, people look at your quality of life, among other things,” Muldrew said.

Students think the idea is good, but the placement could be better.

“I probably wouldn’t go because it’s downtown — Not a lot to do there. It would be better if they built it closer to campus, especially with all the freshmen that don’t have cars,” Adrian Barnes, a senior history major, said.

“I think it would be a good thing. Any opportunity to socialize is good,” Marco Ossorio, a sophomore business management major, said.

“I feel like the campus has all that, so students wouldn’t necessarily want to go,” Emma Mathews, a senior political science major, said.

“I like the idea, but not the placement,” Jessica Smith, a freshman biology major, said.

Muldrew said “I don’t see any downside to having a park, and the downtown seems to represent your community.”