Ormeau Park is the oldest municipal park in the city. It contains areas of woodland, and amenity space as well as a range of facilities including pitches, two playgrounds, a BMX track, tennis and netball courts, bowling greens and pavilion, eco trails and orienteering route and public toilets. The wider site is home to the Ozone sports complex, which is operated by GLL, the independently ran Ormeau Golf Course, and a Council operated recycling centre.
There are ten access gates into Ormeau Park, none of which currently connect onto lit paths. Eight of these are pedestrian gates:
- two on Park Road
- one opposite Ormeau Road Library
- one entrance to Ormeau Embankment public toilets
- one pedestrian entrance at the Ravenhill corner of Ormeau embankment
- three kissing gates on Ravenhill Rd.
There is one vehicular gate at the Ozone entrance on Ormeau Embankment which allows access to the Ozone car park and onwards into the park, and one opposite Candahar Street allowing access to disabled parking at the rear of the bowling pavilion.
All gates currently open dawn to dusk in line with standard parks opening hours apart from the vehicular access at Ozone, which remains open to 10pm year-round in line with use of the Ozone leisure centre and pitch use.
Whilst some of our parks benefit from lighting infrastructure on an element of their path networks, Ormeau Park currently does not. Any future provision of lighting would be subject to funding, and informed by feasibility work that will include habitat assessment and options appraisal.
