Oak Ridge's Newest Park Kept Its Farm on Purpose

Walk the trail that loops around Heritage Farm Park on any weekday morning and there's a decent chance you'll hear a tractor before you see the playground. Kyle Anders and his son Sam still work the fields at the edge of the property, the same ground that used to belong to Frank and Claudia Whitaker before the town bought it in 2018. Most people assume the name is a nod to the past, a bit of branding for a park built where a farm used to be. It isn't. Part of Heritage Farm Park is still an active farm, right now, with lighted ballfields and a Veterans memorial planted next to it.

That detail changes how the rest of the story reads. The town didn't build Heritage Farm Park fast, and it isn't building the sports courts residents have been asking about fast either. Once you know the land itself was never meant to be fully developed, the slow pace of everything else at that park stops looking like delay and starts looking like the point.

Two Parks, One Loop

Oak Ridge residents have had Town Park at 6231 Lisa Drive since 2008. At 80 acres, funded through the town's capital reserves along with a $500,000 grant from the state's Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, it's the place most people picture when they think about green space here. It has two playgrounds, a stocked pond, several paved walking trails, a mountain bike trail through the wooded section, the Bark Park, lighted multipurpose and baseball fields, a concession stand, and the amphitheater where most of the town's public life happens.

Heritage Farm Park opened in 2024 as an extension of that same footprint rather than a separate destination. At 60 acres and roughly a $5.7 million investment, financed through a mix of town borrowing, a $490,000 PARTF matching grant, and $1.65 million in American Rescue Plan funds, it sits on Scoggins Road, close enough to Town Hall and Oak Ridge Elementary that people started walking the new trail before the ribbon was even cut. That trail crosses Linville Road and links directly into the paths already running through Town Park, which means the two parks now function as one connected loop covering close to 140 acres in the middle of town.

If you've only ever visited one side of that loop, you're missing the part that explains the other.

The Land Is Still Being Farmed

The Whitaker family sold the property to the town specifically because they wanted the land to stay undeveloped rather than turn into another subdivision. The town's answer was to build around that condition instead of against it. The original garage from the Whitaker farm still stands on the property. The perimeter fields are still worked by the Anders family. Mayor Jim Kinneman put it plainly when the park opened, saying the goal was "preserving a lot of the open space," and the design choices back that up in ways that go beyond the acreage that stayed in crops.

The inclusive playground at Heritage Farm Park, built to serve children of all abilities, was designed to resemble the Old Mill of Guilford, the 18th century grist mill on Beaver Creek that's been grinding grain since 1767 and still sells flour and jams a short drive from the park. It's a small detail, but it means the play equipment kids are climbing on today is shaped like a working piece of the town's actual history rather than a generic structure that could sit in any subdivision park anywhere.

The Veterans Honor Green sits nearby, funded by community donations matched by the town, and past the multipurpose fields there's a Tranquility Garden dedicated by the Lions Club to its past members. None of it reads as an afterthought. It reads like a town that decided a park could hold memory and recreation on the same acre without one crowding out the other.

Why the Courts Keep Slipping

The piece residents actually ask about most is Phase 2, the addition of pickleball, tennis, and basketball courts along with fitness stations and expanded parking. Anyone who's followed the debate knows it's been slower to arrive than the rest of the park.

Back in 2024, council members Mike Stone and Michael Greeson pushed to move faster, pointing to nearby Stokesdale, which had built two pickleball courts and a basketball court for under $300,000 in about six months. Their argument was straightforward: Oak Ridge's own capital improvement plan had the sports courts scheduled roughly five years out, and residents over 16 who weren't involved in youth sports had almost nothing built specifically for them beyond walking and biking trails. Council member Ann Schneider pushed back that adult leagues already use Town Park's fields and that the town's open spaces offer plenty on their own. Whether courts should be a priority or a patient addition became a real disagreement, not a formality.

The most recent public update came from the town's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board in November 2025, where members voted 7-0 to select Revington Reaves as the engineering and design firm for Phase 2, with Benesch as the runner-up. That vote moved the project from concept to active design work. It did not set a groundbreaking date. As of now, the courts residents have been debating since 2024 are still in the design phase, not under construction, which tracks with everything else about how this park has come together. Nothing here has moved at the pace of a typical municipal project, because the land itself was bought with the explicit understanding that most of it would stay exactly as it was.

The Same Ground Hosts the Whole Calendar

What makes this loop worth understanding, rather than just walking, is how much of Oak Ridge's public life already runs through it. The Town Park amphitheater hosts the Music in the Park series each year, with the Bank of Oak Ridge sponsoring dates from May through September and Hawthorne Northwest covering May through July, while the Merchants of Oak Ridge back every show. The 2026 series runs through six Saturday evenings, wrapping up on September 10, the same night RidgeFest opens at the same park for its three-day run through September 12.

RidgeFest, organized by the Merchants of Oak Ridge, is the town's biggest weekend, and it happens on the same 80 acres where the pond, the Bark Park, and the mountain bike trail all sit. Heritage Day follows two weeks later on September 26, and the Purple Wagon Arts & Craft Show returns for its fall date on November 7, both anchored at the same park. Even Light Up the Night in December happens here.

All of it sits on ground that includes a working farm on one end and a Veterans memorial on the other. The town didn't separate its recreation, its history, and its agriculture into different corners of town. It put them on the same loop and asked residents to walk between them.

That's worth knowing next time you're deciding where to take the dog or wondering, again, when the pickleball courts might actually break ground. The answer to the second question is tied directly to the first. A town that bought farmland and kept it farmland was never going to rush the rest.

If you're weighing a move within Oak Ridge or just curious what a property near this stretch of town might be worth, Melody B. Davis has spent years working this exact corner of the Piedmont Triad and is glad to talk through what you're seeing on the ground. Let's Connect.