By Madeline Ackley | Your Valley
Ground has officially been broken at the future site of Litchfield Square, an ambitious development project nearly three decades in the making that has cycled through several rounds of city leadership and design concepts.
Various city leaders involved in the project spoke to a small crowd Wednesday at the groundbreaking ceremony held outside the gated-off construction site adjacent to Litchfield Park City Hall.
The $52 million development project is the city’s attempt at creating a downtown core, which will be on the east side of Litchfield Road, north of Wigwam Boulevard.
Plans for Litchfield Square, which was until recently named City Center, envision a public-private mixed-use project featuring 400,000-square-feet of multistory restaurants, retail, offices and possibly residential space surrounding a 2.5-acre park.
City Engineer Woody Scoutten, also the project manager of Litchfield Square, called the development a “legacy project” and the culmination of his 50-year engineering career.
