Even as the earth movers plowed up contaminated soil for removal to a safe haven elsewhere, the birds waited. Egrets, great blue herons, red winged black birds and others landed on shore or walked the waters near the northeastern edge of Newark Bay waiting for the moment when the park would open.
For James Monkowski, the city’s environmental specialist, this has been a labor of love, although a project that he more or less fell into several years ago.
Called “North 40 Park” until its recent renaming after former Bayonne Mayor Richard Rutkowski, the slightly more than 40-acre parcel of land was designed to accommodate wildlife, not human recreational activities.
The park is named after former Mayor Rutkowski, who took a very early interest in preserving the environment. Due for an early June opening, Rutkowski Park has multiple features, from an upland section where people can gather for concerts near a natural amphitheater and a painted platform depicting the points of a compass to the more exotic wetland section over which a wooden walk provides humans with the opportunity to gaze at wildlife in a natural setting. The walkway is complete with bird blinds and an outdoor classroom, and picture panels that show the kind of wildlife that can be found visiting the site.
Monkowski, from whose sketches the wetlands park was designed, seemed to know every inch of the 40 acres, what goes where and why, and pointed frequently to various parts where plantings had been done – chokeberry, wild flowers, assorted quick growing trees, even various types of grasses, some of which will get mowed only once a year.
The walkway, which will be open from about 8 a.m. to dusk every day, connects to Stephen Gregg-County Park on the south end and the upland portion of Rutkowski Park on the north with giant metal gates locking off that portion after dark.
“Only the upland portion will be lighted,” Monkowski said.
The gates incorporate designs that reflect the wildlife of the park as well as depictions of the city with images of birds and the Bayonne Bridge.
The walkway, which complies with federal handicapped accessible requirements, is about a quarter-mile long. A bike path runs along the upland side of the path, one of the other many features the new park provides.
Once open water, the area was filled for a highway
The land, of course, served many purposes over the years, although Monkowski pointed out that it had once been a waterway that later served industrial use after being filled. Sculpting out the contamination has been a big part of the expense, although numerous county, state, federal and commercial entities contributed to the nearly $7 million cost, including the State Green Acres Fund, Hudson County Open Space Fund, state Department of Transportation, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, IMTT, Baker Industries, Empire Golf and others.
“The city paid about $500,000,” said Mayor Joseph Doria, who took part in the short tour, “So we got a $7 million park for $500,000.”
Rutkowski Park was designed to provide passive entertainment, not ball fields, but plenty of places for people to stroll, sit and observe nature.
“In the early 1960s this was all open water,” Monkowski said, pointing to the area which has been sculpted into the wetland portion of the park.
The area was filled in the 1960s when a highway was proposed to run down the west side of Bayonne. The route of the highway was eventually changed, crossing to the east side of Bayonne, leaving the west side for development and public access.
Emergency phones have been installed in several key points in the park, even one along the walkway, instantly connecting a person with the Bayonne Police Department.
Plans took time to realize
For a long time, the park was largely on paper and in Monkowski’s brain, a vision that took several years to shape out of the land as contaminated soil was shifted off to safe havens and clean soil sent to places like the Bayonne Golf Club.
Even as he talked and pointed, many of the features he described were still months or even a year ahead, as the lagoon-like structure of the wetlands phase remained drained for planting, and where he described high growing grasses or other plants, plugs of green showed like plants struggling to grow in a desert, fencing and wire strewn across the surface to keep the Canada Geese from devouring the plants before each has a chance to grow.
“They’ll put them up by the roots,” he explained as he pointed to the channels throughout the rising tide that was designed to flow eventually covering the entire landscape for a habitat in which plants and fish would flourish. Originally, the design called for this protected space to be open to the water but heavy winter storms made Monkowski rethink this logic and request to keep a berm of dirt installed during construction. Under this, the crews installed 48-inch pipes allowing water to get into the area but avoid the erosion storms could bring. Even as he worked to get the park completed, Monkowski couldn’t help but notice the arrival of birds, all apparently waiting for the area to flourish. Most of the planting will take time to take a firm hold so that Monkowski predicted that the wetland park won’t look the way it ought to until the summer of 2007, and then it will look amazing.
The water of the wetland area will become a haven for fish, where they can lay their eggs, beginning the process of spawning but also serving as most the basic level of the local natural food chain, drawing larger fish and more varieties of birds all coming here to feed.
And during this process, visitors to the park will be able to see them from the blinds and schoolchildren will be able to study them using an open air classroom that is connected to the walkway.
Even before the park has become fully functional, Monkowski has seen heron and egrets, various sparrows and swallows, even a small falcon, and numerous smaller birds he hasn’t had time to identify.
From 8 a.m. to dusk, people can access the park via the gate into the county park. But the roadway access to the small parking lot is off Route 440 just as it turns south along the northern side of Bayonne. Getting permission for this added to the many delays that have troubled the development of the park, delays for the most part due to red tape, not problems with construction.
The upland section of the park also provided a few surprises, trees worth keeping that were disguised by the weeds and lesser trees. This gave the park a green beginning, and though Monkowski said the project called for the installation of some quick growing trees, some of the new trees will take time to grow and fill in the landscape. While some sections of the lawn will be trimmed, some areas were seeded with grass that will only be cut once or twice a year.
“By next summer, this is going to be a wonderful place,” Monkowski said, although from the way he looked over the place, he seemed to already think it was wonderful – perhaps because he had a perfect vision of it already painted in his head.