The city of Post Falls says it's working on a proposed master plan for Corbin Park that envisions adding a small campground and several picnic shelters and reconfiguring roads, parking, a softball field, and the park's disc golf course.

In addition to picnic and land-based sports amenities, the 33-acre park, which is located along the north bank of the Spokane River at the south end of Corbin Road in east Post Falls, also offers river access for fishing and paddle sports.

The city's Parks and Recreation Commission will review a conceptual design for the master plan at its Jan. 26 meeting, says Dave Fair, the city's parks director.

If the commission accepts the conceptual design, which was prepared by Eccos Design LLC, of Mount Vernon, Wash., the master plan would proceed to the engineering and design stages with Eccos, Fair says.

After engineering and design were done, the master plan would be brought before the City Council for final approval before construction could begin. He estimates it would take two to three years to design and construct the proposed park improvements.

Fair doesn't yet have a cost estimate for the proposed improvements, although the Parks Department would seek grants to help pay for them, and other funding would come through a combination of user fees, development impact fees, and park trust funds

Corbin Park has grown steadily in popularity since the city acquired the initial 28 acres of the park from Kootenai County and the state of Idaho in the 1980s. The growth in use has led to encroachment by different user groups on one another's activities, Fair says.

"We're trying to define the space so it doesn't have overlaps, which cause conflicts between uses," he says.

As envisioned, the campground wouldn't be designed for use by big recreational vehicles, Fair says.

The conceptual plan shows 23 drive-up campsites that would accommodate small camping trailers and tents in a loop in the west part of the park. Those campsites would have electric and water hookups, but no sewer connections.

Five or six walk-in tent sites, with a shared water spigot and no electrical service, would be just west of the loop, Fair says.

"We recognize we need to offset tax dollars for operations, and the campground gives us an opportunity to do that" by charging fees for camping, he says.

The softball field in the center of the park would be adjusted slightly so the disc golf course could be reconfigured north of it, and the footprint of the disc golf course, which currently has 15 holes, would be reduced, Fair says.

In the park's current configuration, three disc golf holes are south of the softball field, a few are east of it, and the remaining holes are north of the field.

Fair says the conceptual plan envisions four new picnic shelters and other structures in the park with a rustic appearance reminiscent of the Civilian Conservation Corps-built structures of the 1930s. The park currently has two picnic shelters.

The conceptual plan shows that the park's interior road would be realigned and would have roughly 62 delineated parking spaces to improve traffic flow and reduce impacts of vehicles on the site, he says.

A house on five acres of recently acquired property adjoining the west side of the park would be converted to a caretaker's residence, Fair says.