Selection boiled down to a half-dozen choices
When the city unveils its renovated park on Adler Street, a new name will adorn its entrance: Boerne Heritage Volkspark.
The City Council unanimously adopted the name during its June 23 meeting, ending a weeks-long process involving input from both the community and the city’s elected representatives.
The park development, initially costing $13 million, primarily was funded with 2022 bond money. The near-30-acre space across from Curington Elementary School is expected to total $16 million for its first phases.
Of 14 names submitted by council members, “the overall highest-ranked name was Boerne Heritage Park,” Assistant City Manager Kristy Stark told the council. “The next five names, the top six, you might say, ranked very very close, almost the same.”
Those five — Boerne Commons, Boerne Erbschaft (Heritage) Park, Volkspark, Boerne Community Park and North Boerne Community Park — received further council review.
Mayor Pro Tem Ty Wolosin said he looked up “Heritage” and “Commons” as park names “and they are extremely common throughout Texas. There are tons of them.”
With those names, he said, “There is no uniqueness, which I think, that’s one thing about our community, is the uniqueness. Boerne itself is a unique name.”
He suggested tying the top choice, Heritage, with a German word or name, to pay homage to the immigrants who traveled from North Europe to settle Boerne.
“Could we add something to those, to kind-of join the German heritage with one of those?” he said. Wolosin offered Boerne Heritage Volkspark, “something to make it more unique, might be interesting.”
Volkspark is German for “people’s park” or “public park” in English.
District 5 Councilman Joseph Macaluso agreed, saying, “I think it speaks to the heritage, overall and to the German history as well.”
He added, “To make it work, you just marry them.”
District 2 Councilman Joe Bateman urged caution on getting too creative with the name.
“I think we need to be cautious and not ‘over-unique’ ourselves with a name that’s difficult to pronounce” or people fail to understand its relevance, he said.
He added, “Whatever name we pick tonight, it’s about the park becoming a valued community asset. I’ve kind-of looked back and said, ‘You know what? There aren’t any wrong answers on this list.”
While he expressed his satisfaction with tying German heritage to the park, he added the naming process proved very time consuming.
“To me, the more important business is what we started off the meeting with, the city budget, and making sure we plan ahead for the next 10 years,” he said. “Boerne itself is a unique name.”
— Mayor Pro Tem Ty Wolosin
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