The usual winter weather held off long enough for a crowd gathered in the middle of one of Ridgefield’s new housing developments to celebrate the opening of a community park.
On Saturday, Jan. 28, community members, city officials, and family of the late Joe Melo ceremonially opened DeMelo Park. Joe Melo was the project manager for Hinton Development, a prominent Clark County development company that works in Ridgefield.
Joe Melo passed away suddenly in August of 2021 after developing COVID-19, said Nikole Duke, Hinton Development’s manager of single family residential development. Prior to his death, he was a prominent member of the company.
In his honor, the park bears more than just a sign with his face on it.
“I wanted every aspect to remind me of Joe,” Duke said.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, speakers recounted the many aspects of Joe Melo’s personality which are on display through park amenities.
Joe Melo and the rest of his family grew up on a farm, recognized by the park’s gazebo which is covered by the top of an old grain silo, his former boss and Hinton Development partner Mark Hinton said.
Joe Melo’s love of exercise is memorialized in the equipment laid out across the park. The musical play area, featuring a variety of percussion equipment, calls back to his passion for song.
“Any spare moment he had, he was playing his drums,” Hinton said. It was a bittersweet day for Hinton, who spoke to the character of the park’s namesake.
“Joe loved building parks,” Hinton said.
The park sits on a five-acre parcel, about half of which is preserved as a natural area, Ridgefield City Manager Steve Stuart said. Apart from habitat and water quality enhancements, that area also features a primitive trail that connects to the paved walkway in the developed portion of the park.
The land was dedicated as a park through the development of the Kemper Grove subdivision by Hinton Development, Stuart said. The developer created the plans for the park and the city offered credits on park impact fees Hinton would have normally paid, Stuart said. All new development in Ridgefield is subject to the fees, which are intended to benefit parks in the city.
Any residential development in the city is required to set aside a quarter of the land for parks and open space, Stuart said.
“With any park, you get very basic (improvements),” Stuart said. “These improvements obviously go well beyond that.”
Impact fee credits give parks development in the city an advantage, the city manager said.
“We get a better end result, we get it less expensive and quicker if they’re doing it versus us,” Stuart said.
Joe Melo’s brother, Nelson, turned his attention to the future of the park. He said one day an old man and a little girl would be seated at a park bench, and the girl would ask the man why it was named DeMelo Park.
“That name came from about 5,000 miles away from here, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on an island called Terceira,” Nelson Melo said.
DeMelo is the Portuguese rendering of the Melo family name.
Nelson Melo expected one day to be asked by that little girl if he knew the park’s namesake.
“And I will say to my granddaughter, ‘little Blake … I knew Joe, and I know how much Joe loved Ridgefield,’” Nelson Melo said.
