Overview

Bartley Park is a 50-acre tract that the Town owns on the south side of Penny Road near Holly Springs Road. The Town purchased the property in 2000.

Located in southeastern Cary, the outstanding natural and manmade features of the park site present an opportunity to create a unique facility in the Town’s recreational offerings. The character of the land and its historical use as a working farm suggested a plan that balanced an environmentally-sensitive design with the passive and active recreation needs of the community. With many of the original farm structures intact, the site’s agrarian features serve as a symbol of a rapidly disappearing resource in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

Park Plan

See the layout envisioned for the park.
See the illustrative master plan or read a text only version of the plan.
View the Site Plan for Phase I of Bartley Park.

The firm of Lappas & Havener of Durham prepared the master plan for Bartley Park. The Town Council adopted the plan in September 2004. In 2009, the design of the first phase of the park was completed. Phase 1’s planned improvements include:

• Playground
• Sprayground
• Dog Park
• Greenway trails
• Public art
• Restroom Building
• Picnic Shelter
• Parking
• Road Improvements
• Utilities
• Landscaping

Public Art

Artists Vollis Simpson from Lucama, N.C. and William Moore from Pittsboro, N.C. were commissioned to create unique features for the park’s site, drawing their inspiration from the farm’s earlier life.

Simpson is best known for his four-story whirligig that stands at the entrance of the Baltimore Visionary Art Museum and his whirligig in the sculpture park at the North Carolina Museum of Art. His towering sculptures spin in the breeze and are made from cast off machine parts and farm equipment.

William Moore is the creator of the much loved katal dragon at Marla Dorrel Park, which was commissioned by Cary Visual Art and donated to the Town of Cary. For Bartley Park, Moore will create a flock of Suffolk Sheep, which were a distinctive feature of the working Bartley farm.

Both artists public art works for Bartley Park will be temporarily installed in downtown Cary. Vollis Simpson's three whirligigs have been temporarily installed at the corner of Chapel Hill Road and Academy Street in the front of the Herb Young Community Center. William Moore's flock of nine Suffolk sheep will be temporarily installed in the future downtown park site near Academy Street and the newly opened Cary Arts Center.

Schedule

This project was postponed in 2009. Learn more. At this time, there is no funding to complete this park.

Contact

Paul A. Kuhn, RLA
Landscape Architect
Parks, Recreation & Cultural Resources Department
Town of Cary
(919) 469-4360
paul.kuhn@townofcary.org