Some of the fences surrounding Esther Simplot Park are finally down.
Despite the visual progress, excited park goers will have to wait before exploring the area due to the City of Boise wanting to have all the shrubs, plants, and bushes take root.
Park managers want to ensure that the roots are set in the soil and are delaying the park to make sure that people and animals don’t rip up the foliage which would create mud and erosion.
"All the planting won't be completed until the June or July timeframe and so we really wouldn't have an opportunity to get it open this summer. At the absolute earliest would be sometime in the fall, but at this juncture we're not even sure that that's an attainable opening date as well," Boise Parks Director Doug Holloway explained.
Holloway went on to urge the public that the park may look open, but the only guests allowed inside will be waterfowl.
"It's going to be well worth the wait when the time does come that the park is open. But we want to do it the right way and make sure all the planting we put in here will look beautiful when the park is actually open," Holloway said.
When the park is complete, combined with a Boise River restoration project, it will create a waterway loop from Quinn’s Pond down the river to Veteran’s Memorial Park and back.
"What you've created here is a recreational water complex that really we believe is like nothing else in the country," Holloway boasted. “There’s no cost to be able to participate in this and that's probably the best feature, I think, of this entire complex."
