A new park celebrating the city’s 150th birthday is a step closer to reality.

The city’s Sesquicentennial Commission on Tuesday closed its bank account, presenting a check for $198,454 to the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department – money that will help pay for a Sesquicentennial Plaza below Clinton Lake dam.

The donation produced “kind of a good feeling,” said Clenece Hills, the Sesquicentennial Commission chairwoman who spent the last six-plus years planning the city’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2004 and raising money for the new park.

“It’s something that will obviously last forever, and is something our community takes great pride in,” Mayor Mike Amyx said of the planned park.

The commission donated $14,500 in September to begin engineering plans on the park.

“We want to get started on the project as soon as we can,” said Fred DeVictor, the city’s director of parks and recreation.

Plans for the park include a multiacre plaza, three large earth berms each representing 50 years of the community’s history and a “Walkway through Time.”

The walkway, which would connect the plaza with a time capsule buried during 2004’s sesquicentennial celebrations, would feature engraved stones for each of the city’s 150 years. Some of the stones – measuring about 1 feet by 4 feet – have been purchased by area businesses, families or organizations and engraved with their names.

There’s also hope that the park someday could include a 5,000-seat amphitheater.

But city officials said Tuesday they’ll have to start small.

“We aren’t going to be able to complete everything that was part of that plan – it was like a $350,000 project,” DeVictor said. “But the key thing is we want to do as much of the plaza as we can.”

The Sesquicentennial Commission began operations in November 1999. Its work is now over.

“This is kind of the last official act, as far as the commission,” said Hills, who won widespread praise for her efforts. “We are finished.”