Westerville City Council has decided to move forward with plans to renovate First Responders Park.
The city has planned a $1 million expansion of the park at 374 W. Main St. to include expanding the park’s space into the parking lot and changing the shape to include two memorial walls.
The main impetus for the new park would be to incorporate a memorial for Westerville Division of Police officers Eric Joering and Anthony Morelli, who died in the line of duty while responding to a call Feb. 10. Their names would be placed next to that of David Theisen, a Westerville firefighter who died in 1998 while battling a fire in Crooksville.
Currently, the two focal points of the park are a sculpture called “The Crossing,” which was commissioned in memory of Theisen in 2011, and a section of steel known as “C-40? from the north tower of the World Trade Center that fell during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City in 2001.