JEFFERSON CITY — A quiet swath of green along a busy corridor of north St. Louis County is in line for a makeover designed to lure more urban residents into nature.

The Bellefontaine Conservation Area, a public park at the intersection of Interstate 270 and Lewis and Clark Boulevard, will be part of a first-ever study overseen by state officials that could result in new features in the 133-acre parcel.

Aisha Muhammad, community conservation planner for the Missouri Department of Conservation, said the public park has not been highly utilized and is likely not as well-known as other MDC conservation areas.

“I would say this is a unique challenge as we move forward to assess how we can make the area more accessible, user-friendly and more highly visited,” Muhammad said.

The Department of Conservation has more than 1,000 public open spaces scattered around Missouri that are open for hiking, hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities.

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The Bellefontaine unit is among a handful of those in urban areas. It includes one lake and three ponds which are stocked with black bass, white bass, catfish and sunfish.

The property, much of it shielded from traffic on I-270 by a band of forest, shares a driveway with the Missouri Veterans Home.

The mostly flat parcel of grassland and band of forest was acquired by the Department of Conservation from the state Department of Mental Health in the 1990s because of its potential as an urban fishing and nature education spot.

A state facility for the developmentally disabled borders to the east and a state-run nursing home for military veterans is located in the southwest quadrant.

This spring, the department issued a call for vendors to conduct a study in surrounding communities to determine what kinds of features residents would like to see at the facility.