Group pursuing horse-themed park in Saratoga Springs

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Discussions are beginning on how to bring a park featuring horse sculptures to the city.

A nonprofit Pocket Park Foundation has been established to raise money for a small park similar to a Lexington, Ky., park that features bronze sculptures of famous racehorses in full stride with their jockeys aboard.

“It’s really well done. It’s probably one of the most photographed places in the whole city of Lexington,” said Dennis Brida, a former horse trainer who lives in Ballston Spa.

Brida would like to see the city buy the quarter-acre slice of land at the intersection of South Broadway and Route 50 where the former Getty service station was recently demolished.

“My personal idea is that is a great slot to do it,” Brida said. He and the other members of the group approached the city’s open space committee last year and suggested the city buy the land through open space bond money.

This year, the city’s finances are in worse shape, and Mayor Scott Johnson said the city can’t afford to buy the land.

But officials are working with owner Crown Oil on another option.

“Right now we’re pursuing other ways of acquiring the land without the city buying it,” he said, declining to discuss specifics because “it would jeopardize a transaction.”

Brida said he has talked with some owners of horses with Saratoga connections, including Jack Knowlton, part owner of Funny Cide, and Richard Bomze, owner and breeder of Fourstardave.

He would like to see local horses honored at the park but said the discussions about what the sculptures would feature remain up in the air.

“It’s wide open,” Brida said. “We haven’t made any hard, fast decisions on exactly the way it would be.”

Johnson said the planning has to be a community effort and he doesn’t want to limit it only to horses that ran at Saratoga.

“It’s a working process and it should not be viewed as finalized in any way,” the mayor said.

Brida said the foundation has contacted some sculptors about the proposed project and has tossed around the idea of selling bricks at the site to pay for the art.

“I just don’t want a generic, sterile horse there. I want something that’s a work of art,” he said. “I’m sure if we do it right, it could make a great postcard.”

The park could go somewhere else in the city if there is a better spot, Brida said, but the Crown Oil property seems ideal because it is a gateway to the city’s southern end.

He envisions a park where people could stop for a few minutes while driving or walk from downtown or nearby hotels like the Holiday Inn.

At the city’s request, Crown Oil tore down the former service station buildings this fall and landscaped the area. The small lot shrank even more when the city cut into it to make a right turning lane from Route 50 onto South Broadway as part of the South Broadway restructuring project.

The project sought to beautify the southern gateway with sidewalks and curbs as well as a repaved road.

Unlike the fragile fiberglass art horses that keep getting vandalized downtown, the proposed bronze sculptures would be anchored to the ground and “pretty indestructible,” Brida said.

“It’s in a well-trafficked area,” he said of the South Broadway site, adding that the Lexington horses do not get vandalized.

“They’ve had many, many, many years of great service to the city of Lexington.”