A sewer project will proceed as planned despite requests from one resident to alter plans for a lift station in a Northside park.

The Department of Public Works created plans for the Crooked Creek area sewer improvements.

Seven miles of pipeline will be laid from 10th Street and Miley Avenue to Juan Solomon Park — near Grandview Drive and Fox Hill Drive — as part of the $100 million Belmont North Relief Interceptor project, said Kit Werbe, DPW spokeswoman. The new pipeline will run parallel to existing sewer line.

When the extension is complete, about 2,300 homes in Center, Pike, Washington and Wayne townships will hook up to sewers through the city’s septic tank elimination program. It will be paid for through the State Revolving Fund, which provides loans to communities for projects that improve wastewater and drinking water infrastructure, Werbe said.

Crooked Creek resident Kerry Michael Manders agrees the project will relieve sewer capacity and septic tank problems but thinks the lift station planned for Juan Solomon Park, 6100 Grandview Drive, would have a negative effect on the park. He helped raise money to buy part of the parkland in the 1990s and donate it to Indy Parks.

“The lift station would be at the focal point of everyone entering the park,” Manders said. “It is not my intention to undermine this project. It is my intention to try to have this project and the park coexist in the least invasive way possible.”

Manders also said the station would sit in a flood plain. He suggested an alternate site for the lift station in the southeast corner of the park to DPW planners, but the change would delay the project and cost an additional $4.5 million, said Steve Nielson, DPW deputy director/chief engineer. A similar station sits in Broad Ripple Park.

Manders said the city and Parks Department failed to communicate plans to area residents.

Bids will go out in September, and construction on the 18- to 24-month project should begin in January, said Nielson who worked with Indy Parks on the project.

The Parks Department is pleased with the project that will include restrooms, a water fountain and a community room near the lift station, Nielson said. The park will lose two tennis courts. Plans call to remove the current playground and put a new one where the tennis courts sit. The soccer fields will remain, and no trees will be removed.

The current playground is more than 10 years old, said Paula Freund, Indy Parks spokeswoman. Juan Solomon’s new playground will feature rubber tiles to protect children in a fall.

“If the playground that is there got too old, we’d just have to pull it out,” Freund said.