North Kansas City park opens decades after Eagle Scout drew up original plans

KSHB 41 News anchor Taylor Hemness reports on stories across the Kansas City metro. You can contact Taylor by email.

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Last month, a new park opened in North Kansas City, which isn't necessarily big news.

But it was pretty big for the man who designed the layout of River Forest Park as an Eagle Scout project back in 1980.

I met David Garrett in the park recently, where he brought the original plans he drew when he was 16.

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"When you're 16 years old, designing a park [is] not really on your radar, right?" Garrett told me. "My mom was a big help. I couldn't have done it without Mom."

Garrett had a lot of help, but he also poured a lot of effort into researching a piece of property in his neighborhood that had been owned by North Kansas City since 1974.

He presented his final product to the city and even got his picture in the paper with the mayor.

He’s still got copies of that, too.

"There he is presenting me with the resolution; it was Dave Garrett Day for a day," Garrett said. “I fully thought it was going to be done before I graduated high school."

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It wasn't. His plan was approved, but the funding never materialized.

"Over the years, I thought, ‘Well, that'll never happen,’" Garrett told me.

Turns out he wasn't the only scout to make a push for the park. Deputy City Administrator Kim Nakahodo told me that Garrett's same troop, 301, tried again in 1994.

"They actually did some public engagement, got people's ideas, and actually mapped topography of this particular park," Nakahodo said.

It still didn’t happen.

But the push from the neighborhood wouldn't die. It was even championed by a woman who moved into the former scoutmaster's house.

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"Scouting is woven through the entire history of River Forest Park," Nakahodo told me. “Those of us that are here today, we went back into the archives."

And they started to find the money. Nakahodo actually wrote the grant that got the ball rolling for real.

That brings us to early 2026.

Garrett got a call from a childhood friend who still lives near the park, telling him that construction had begun.

“Then Parks and Rec reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, are you the Dave Garrett that designed the park for your Eagle project?’ I said, ‘I am,’" Garrett said. "They said we found your plans, and we've kept it all these years, which is amazing."

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Finally, in June, more than 40 years after Garrett drew up those plans, he was there to help cut the ribbon, officially opening the park.

Garrett told me it’s even better than he could have imagined.

His younger self would have been proud. And today, he's making plans to bring his future grandchildren to the park.

"I'm glad I lived long enough, even though I'm not old,” Garrett told me. “I'm glad I lived long enough to see it."

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In an interesting twist, Nakahodo is also a scoutmaster, and she’s encouraging some of her Eagle Scout candidates to do projects to further develop the park.

One other note for those headed to the park: it has a dedicated parking lot attached to it. But when I visited, GPS took me to nearby 26th Street, not the actual entrance and parking lot.

Nakahodo told me the city is working to correct that. Meanwhile, just look for the park signage off Vernon Street in North Kansas City.

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