Metro Parks won't be building a new nature center at Blacklick Woods Metro Park, but officials are still going ahead with plans to build a canopy walk through the trees and a tower with an elevator to bring people up to the walk, and one of two observation decks.

Metro Parks of Columbus and Franklin County is spending $2.1 million for the tower and steel walkway, which it aims to build and complete this year, said Tim Moloney, the agency's executive director.

In December 2020, the Metro Parks board of commissioners budgeted as part of the district's 2021 budget $4.5 million for a new nature center with an observation deck, a children's play area and the canopy walk at Blacklick Woods Metro Park, located off East Livingston Avenue on Columbus' Far East Side. 

The nature center was to be called the Blacklick Woods Treehouse and was scheduled to be finished in 2021. But Moloney said that construction costs kept rising, forcing Metro Parks to reconsider the project.

"We didn't want to overspend," he said.

So the park's existing nature center will remain. 

Moloney said the canopy walk will be a 400-foot loop — 30 feet off the ground — to and from the tower.

The Metro Parks board recently approved a $1.1-million contract with R.W. Setterlin Building Company of Columbus for the tower, which also will include a 50-to-55-foot-high observation deck. That deck will be accessible by stairs only from the 40-foot elevator tower that will have a smaller observation deck outside its doors, and will also be accessible from stairs from the ground. In May 2021, Metro Parks approved a $1 million contract with Setterlin for the canopy walk.

Aryeh Alex, one of the three Metro Parks board members, said it will be unlike anything else in the area — and one more way to draw people to the parks.

Aaron Lane, vice president of Friends of Metro Parks, a nonprofit advocacy organization, said the canopy walk is indicative of attractions Metro Parks is adding to locations. He cited Quarry Trails Metro Park in Columbus, which will have a new rock climbing and rappelling area where climbers will be able to move across the face of a cliff via rings and cables.

"I think we’re trying to do more things like this. It's kind of exciting and different, not a normal trail through the woods," Lane said. "It's pretty cool, pretty unique."