City Council Approve Loma Vista Park Plans, New City Flag Designs

A rendering of the new Loma Vista Community development in east Clovis. (City of Clovis)

One of the items discussed at Monday’s city council meeting was the request to approve the site layout of the Loma Vista Village Green.

This will be a seven acre park that will be located between DeWolf Avenue and Leonard Avenue, north of Gettysburg Avenue.

The concept of the park consists of several different areas like two children’s playgrounds, open green spaces, an amphitheater, a clock tower with a sitting area, a water feature and an area where food trucks can gather. It will also have one main entry where a feature is planned to be the focal point, one trail entryway and two side entries and will also be in the Spanish colonial architecture style.

Due to budget constraints, the Village Green will be built in stages, starting with green areas of the park and the majority of the proposed improvements. Later on, the shades and playgrounds are supposed to be added along with other improvements that couldn’t be done initially.

This park will serve the Loma Vista community in the south eastern region of the city and will start construction in the development phase early next year and construction in 2022 to be finished in early 2023.

All council members were excited about the concept shown of the park during the presentation and asked that hopefully they could stick to that concept during the actual building phase. Another point made by the council was the issue of parking and where the park goers would park their vehicles without being a nuisance to the neighbors of the park.

Lily Cha, the presenter, commented that there was going to be parking stalls around the park, but there might be some cars that might park along the streets.

There was one public comment from a resident of the area who showed concern for the parking, but is happy that there is a community park in the area. The resident who identified herself as Erica, said that her other concern was the lack of dog parks especially in her neighborhood which is growing rapidly.

Councilmember Whalen said that he was excited about this project and that this concept expressed what Clovis is like.

“I think that the creativity expressed through what you have exhibited is in my view at least, very Clovis-like, very thoughtful,” said Whalen. “I’m hoping that people do take advantage of this village green as we start to develop outside of that area.”

All council members voted unanimously to approve the site layout and design and move forward with the next phase of the Loma Vista Village Green plan.

Another item on the agenda was the final design of the city of Clovis flag and what the final steps would be for final approval. In previous meetings, Bessinger introduced several flag concepts to be reviewed by the council.

For this meeting, Bessinger had four final concepts that were looked at by the members of the council. Three of the concepts had the city seal with different features and colors, and one had the cowboy from the seal surrounded by 13 stars with one of them being gold and the incorporated date of the city at the bottom of the flag.

Two flags would be selected to have a final design made on them and then be shown publicly to see which one the public would prefer best.

The two flags that all council members were in agreement with were the red, white and blue version and the gold background city of Clovis seal version of the flags. However, the council also wanted the date or year of the city incorporation to be added to the flags.

Council agreed that the red, white and blue logo and the gold logo with blue background flags will be the flags to move forward and redesign. The flags will be revised at the next council meeting and then they will decide whether to have the public’s input on the design.

Jorge Rodriguez has a passion for journalism and wants to bring the community information and great stories. After high school Jorge joined the U.S. Army and while in active duty he was deployed twice to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While in college he worked for the Fresno City College Rampage and the Fresno State Collegian newspapers. He graduated from Fresno State in 2019 with a degree in print journalism.