HUDSON: Despite its name, Wood Hollow Metro Park does not feature wooden ravines.
It got its name from large beech and sugar maple trees that had died and rotted out from the inside.
What was left were empty wooden shells that provide shelter for wildlife.
Welcome to Wood Hollow, a still-developing and little-known park that is not yet open to the public.
Metro Parks, Serving Summit County, has devised a basic plan for the park at Barlow and Stow roads in southeast Hudson.
“It’s a pretty cool property,” park district planner Paul Wilkerson said. “And it offers all kinds of opportunities.”
The park, when developed, will look a lot like other metro parks in Summit County with woods, wetlands and now-scrubby farm fields, he said.
It could be similar to the isolated Daffodil Trail at Furnace Run Metro Park in Richfield Township, park district officials have said.
The park district expects to begin negotiations with a landscape architectural firm in January and perhaps award a contract in February, he said.
That company then would begin in the spring to design and engineer facilities for the 225-acre park, he said. Those initial facilities, including the first public access, probably would be built next year.
Facilities probably will be limited: a 30-car parking lot off Barlow Road, an information kiosk, a restroom building and an open-air shelter.
The park could get several new hiking trails and perhaps a playfield.
One 1.2-mile hiking loop exists on the southern part of the park. It was built in 2011 by park district crews. It often gets very muddy and additional improvements might be necessary, Wilkerson said.
New trails might extend to the west to the city of Hudson’s Barlow Farm Park and to the south to the city’s Oak Grove Farm Park, he said.
A small pond exists at Wood Hollow and might be enlarged, and there are a few small streams at Wood Hollow, Wilkerson said.
It feels remote and will be especially popular with birders, he said.
It will be the second metro park facility in Hudson, after the Bike & Hike Trail.
An anonymous donor in August 2010 gave three parcels totaling 143.25 acres to the park district. That includes the 72.98-acre tract north of Barlow Road and west of Stow Road and the 49.48-acre parcel east of Stow Road and north of Barlow Road. The two tracts abut along Stow Road and together create the main park area.
In December 2011, the park district acquired an additional 102.77 acres on the western edge of the larger tract.
The third parcel from the anonymous donor sits on the north side of state Route 303 west of Stow Road in central Hudson. There are no immediate plans to develop that 20.79-acre tract, Wilkerson said.
Three gas wells are located on the Wood Hollow tract, he said.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.