Barber Park: The 81-Acre Front Yard of Conway
Sports fields, a covered hockey rink, a splash pad, a serious dog park and a monthly market — Barber Park on Gatlin Avenue is where Conway's daily life actually happens.
3 minute read
Every real neighborhood has a front yard — the place where its birthdays, league games, dog friendships and Saturday plans actually happen. For Conway, that place is Barber Park: 81.5 acres of Orange County parkland at 3701 Gatlin Avenue, sitting at the foot of Lake George, in use since 1997 and expanded in 2020 into the full-service community park Conway runs on.
What 81 acres buys you
The inventory reads like a suburb’s wish list. Sports fields — including the two lighted multi-purpose fields added in the 15.5-acre expansion that officially opened in March 2020 — plus basketball and sand volleyball courts, a skate park, and the park’s signature oddity: a covered roller hockey rink, roofed against the Florida sun and rain, which doubles as sheltered space for everything from fitness classes to pickup games. The same expansion added the splash pad, the free, fenced water-play area that anchors Conway summers for anyone under ten.
Then there is the dog park — a proper fenced dog park, divided into separate areas for small and large dogs, with hoses for washing down and watering up. It is set a sensible distance from the playgrounds, and on any given evening it is the most socially active acre in Conway. Our Dog’s Day in Conway itinerary starts here for a reason.
Playgrounds come in two sizes, for older and younger kids; pavilions and picnic shelters ring the grounds and host the weekend birthday-party circuit; a paved loop path ties it together for walkers and runners; and Lake George Elementary sits next door, which is why the park’s after-school hours have the energy of a second recess.
The park’s second job: Conway’s town square
Once a month, Barber Park puts on its other hat. The Conway Community Market takes over the grounds on a Sunday — vendors, food trucks, live music, a different theme each month — and functions as the closest thing this unincorporated community has to a town festival. It is free to wander, it raises money for local causes and for the park itself, and it is the single best introduction to Conway for a newcomer. Dates, season and themes are in our market guide.
Leagues, lessons and the everyday program
The fields are not decorative. Barber Park runs on organized play — youth soccer and multi-purpose field sports under the lights, basketball and sand volleyball on the courts, pickleball in the mix, and skating and hockey under the covered rink’s roof, which stays usable through the summer rain that washes out lesser parks. The rink’s cover is the park’s quiet superpower: it is the one place in Conway where a game survives a 4 p.m. thunderstorm, and local fitness groups have adopted it accordingly.
The Lake George end of the park is the calm end — shore, shade and the walking loop, with the elementary school’s presence keeping the whole grounds feeling watched-over and family-first. It is a useful reminder that this park was assembled in pieces, county land and a city-owned addition leased to the county, and grew the way Conway itself grew: practically, a few acres at a time.
How to use it like a local
Go early or go late: midday in summer belongs to the splash pad and the covered rink, and both are smarter than the open fields at noon. League nights and market Sundays fill the Gatlin Avenue lots — arrive before the rush or park and walk in like the neighbors do. Pavilion time is the park’s social currency; the birthday-party circuit books the good shade, so plan gatherings ahead rather than improvising them.
Barber Park is not a destination park in the theme-park sense, and nothing about it tries to be. It is something better and rarer in Orlando: a complete, free, county-run neighborhood park that a whole community genuinely uses, every day, for everything. Conway’s lakes get the postcards. Barber Park gets the life.
Find it in context on the Conway hub, and see where it sits among the region’s ranked stops on the Top Spots Map.
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