The massive renovation at Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville is, gradually, coming to an end.

The northern sidewalk of the park between Monroe and Church streets along the Von Braun Center parking deck reopened this week even as work continues in the rest of the park as part of a $2.5 million project.

City Administrator John Hamilton said this week that the project remains on schedule and the park should be fully reopened by April 1.

"It's a refreshing the park but they will see more usable space for events and festivals and things like that," Hamilton said.

A walk around the park - which remains fenced off except for the newly-opened northern sidewalk - reveals two things in particular about the park renovations: Sidewalks within the park have been expanded and some trees have been removed.

The expanded sidewalk, Hamilton said, are designed to make the park more user-friendly - especially for major downtown events such as panoply. And while the expanded sidewalks naturally take up more greenspace, that greenspace has been recaptured because the lake within the park has been reduced in size.

With the lake being narrowed, the expectation is that there will be improved water flow.

"The way the ponds have been reshaped a little bit, the ponds will do a better job of keeping themselves cleaned out," Hamilton said. "There was a lot of dead space where the water didn't flow and it was easy for sediment to really build up there."

Reshaping the lake has also allowed workers to clean the lake bottom by removing sludge that had built up over several years, Hamilton said.

As for removal of some trees, Hamilton said it's a necessary aspect of maintaining the park. At least three large oak trees have been removed on the south end of the park along Williams Street. And several cherry trees have also been removed.

"The cherry trees don't last that long in decorative sense, which is how we use them," Hamilton said. "The trees were not the original trees. A lot of people don't realize we were pretty regularly having to replace those cherry trees when they died off."

The entire lake will be lined with cherry trees when the project is complete, Hamilton said.

Some of the larger trees, Hamilton said, have been struck by lightning and were dying on their own. He said city officials brought in an arborist to provide insight on how to deal with the trees.

The biggest part of the project has been the installation of seawalls around the lake - which has the benefit of helping preserve the lake but also provides a more decorative look to the park.

A new addition to the park is a sidewalk along the water that will encircle the lake.

"They will see more sidewalks down around the edge of the water," Hamilton said of park goers. "You will be able on a sidewalk to be able to walk the edge of the lake all the way around."