Christine DeBari remembers playing at the neighborhood park at Koelle Blvd. and Blondel Drive. It’s the very same park – with all the same equipment – that her own two children played on until very recently.
“I grew up with this park,” said DeBari, 35, who lives one house away from it. “I remember this park from when I was 5. It was showing its age, for sure. It was bad. There was no place, really, for parents to sit. The only area where you could sit was very wooded. It was just…old.”
But over the last four weeks, crews have been working to completely redo the park.
“I’m so excited because it looks fabulous,” she said last week.
The town plans to redo most of the municipally-owned parks and playgrounds in Secaucus by the end of 2012.
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New features
Thanks to a town initiative to redo most of the 10 or so municipal parks and playgrounds in Secaucus by the end of 2012, the DeBaris will have a completely new park in which to play come Fourth of July weekend.
Each park will be given new jungle gym equipment; rubberized ground surfaces will replace the mulch and sand that have been in place for years; and the playgrounds will include a water feature.
“They’ll probably be different kinds of water features at each park, but they’ll basically be some kind of kiddie shower,” said Mayor Michael Gonnelli last week.
There will also be new picnic tables and benches, and each park will be made wheelchair and handicap accessible.
The playground at Blondel and Koelle, officially known as Naters Park, is the first park in town to be overhauled in decades. This renovation will be followed quickly by a renovation of the Charles Street park.
Demolition work on the Charles Street park, officially known as Ivanovski Park, had already been completed as of last week.
Upgrades on the two parks will cost about $300,000, according to Town Administrator David Drumeler, and will be offset by a $100,000 grant from the Hudson County Open Space Trust Fund. The rest of the funding for the renovations of Naters and Ivanovski will come from untapped money from the town’s capital budget.
“All our parks really needed to be upgraded,” Gonnelli added, echoing DeBari’s points. “The [old] water features at both Blondel and Charles Street haven’t worked in years. There were a lot of obstructions with trees. The surfaces were either wood mulch or sand and required a lot of maintenance, and they sometimes led to injuries [of kids].”
The town will this week advertise for bids for a contractor to redo the soccer field on County Avenue, which will be the third field to be redone. Once completed, the field will feature artificial turf and will be used for soccer, girls’ softball, and Little League games, according to Gonnelli. There will also be a new basketball court there and the town’s first tennis court. The field will be encircled by a new walking track.
“The basketball court and tennis courts will be able to be used at night,” said the mayor. “They’ll be outfitted with lights…Ever single park will be redone over the next two years. These are the first three we decided to tackle.”
The town’s premier outdoor space, Buchmuller Park – aside from the Hudson County-owned Laurel Hill Park – will also be redone within the next 18 months, according to town officials. It, too, will be given new playground equipment, new playing surfaces, and a larger water feature, among other accommodations.
The Gonnelli administration hopes that funding for some of the parks and playgrounds will come from uncollected money owed by Baker Residential, the developer of Riverside Court. When the developer came to Secaucus around 2004, Baker agreed to put $194,000 in escrow for the town to use for open space funding. Although this money has yet to be collected, Gonnelli said he is optimistic that Baker will still honor this commitment.
“Our hope is that by the end of next year, or certainly by 2013, residents will be see a big difference in all our parks and playgrounds in town,” said Gonnelli.
One anxious resident already notices a difference.
“Every day my daughter reports how much work has been done, and what’s still left to do,” said DeBari. “I’ve told her, ‘We can’t play at the park until they’re done.’ She tells me, ‘No. They’re done. Let’s go now.’ ”
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.