Park upgrades coming
As spring races into summer, evidence of the Pottstown Area Regional Recreation Committee’s efforts to provide more things to do outside in the sunshine are springing up all over.
In West Pottsgrove’s Murgia Park, a $168,658 improvement project has just been completed. Located off Manatawny Street near the intersection with Sell Road, the most visible feature of the improvement is a new bridge over Goose Run, which separates the two halves of the park, which lies along Manatawny Creek.
According to Township Manager Craig Lloyd, in addition to supplying and installing the bridge, the contractor extended the paved trail from the existing trail to the bridge and installed a paved landing area on the other side of the bridge and installed an ADA-compliant concrete pad for a picnic table and an ADA-compliant section of paving streamside.
The improvements also include an accessible pathway and a fishing platform.
“We received grants totaling approximately $147,500 toward the project,” Lloyd wrote in response to a Mercury inquiry.
Funding sources included two state grants — one of which is part of a series of “mini-grants” administered by the regional recreation committee — the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation and PECO, according to Lloyd.
Downstream from Murgia Park, children will find new “nature-based” play equipment installed in Pottstown’s Memorial Park.
Part of the funding for that project came from The Walt Disney Company.
About this time last year, Regional Recreational Director Mi-
“I’ll spend $5,000 to get $120,000 any day.”
— Thomas Palladino, vice chairman, West Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners
chael Lane became aware of a $1 million grant program from the National Recreation and Park Association and The Walt Disney Company, offering grants ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.
After reviewing the program with Pottstown Parks and Recreation Director Michael Lenhart, Lane modified an existing design from earlier planning for park upgrades near the Fountain of Youth Splash Park.
He was notified Oct. 31 the grant in the amount of $30,000 had been awarded and was one of only 12 in the nation and the only one in Pennsylvania.
The catch was the project had to be completed by April 30, a deadline that was met with some help from volunteer families who helped to paint some of the fanciful wooden equipment.
Lane himself painted the faces on the “playground spirits,” trees turned upside down with their roots in the air and “transformed them into guardians of the playground galaxy,” he said.
This is only the first phase of a master plan, with phase 2 including an ADA-accessible pathway from the parking lot through the play space and new swings.
“We will also be adding BBQ grills, picnic tables, more benches, safety fencing, plantings and renovations to the entrance, parking lot and lawn area,” Lane said.
“In front of the Nature
Based Play Space, we are planning to add two pieces of play equipment, one for 2-5 year olds and one for 5-12 year olds, to replace the one that was removed last year. We will also be adding safety surfacing under the play equipment,” Lane explained.
He also said $200,000 from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth financing Authority has been secured to help pay for phase 2
“We are hoping to add a line of ‘jumping stumps’ as a transition between the two types of play areas. We are bidding the project out late summer for fall construction,” said Lane.
Further on down the Manatawny, in Riverfront Park, visitors may have noticed a new picnic pavilion and a recently “pollinator garden,” complete with two wooden panels depicting river and woodland scenes carved by local artist Becky Morris.
Nearby is a new onemile loop trail called “Riverwalk,” which is marked by five “nature stations” highlighting different aspects of the environment.
But there are more than regional waterways connecting all these parks. Soon, there will be trails, one of which will extend along the Manatawny Creek from Memorial Park, beneath Route 100, up to Murgia Park and then on into Berks County to connect with a trail coming down from Boyertown.
This is just one of many trails currently being designed and engineered for future construction.
Craig Bachik, an engineer with Navarro and Wright, outlined them for the regional planners in late March.
All of the trails will eventually connect with the Schuylkill River Trail which, with the completion of the new Route 422 bridge over the river, can now cross back into Montgomery County from Chester County and connect with the section that now runs along Industrial Highway in the borough.
Still incomplete is a connection
between that river crossing and the trail head in Parker Ford.
The construction of both the Schuylkill River Trail and the regional connector trails proceeds piecemeal, as funding is identified and awarded, and parcels of property are identified for trail use and permissions obtained.
The regional trail network alone will take as much as 20 years to complete and could eventually cost as much as $13 million, according to estimates released last year.
One trail section will be called the Coventry Trail and connect North Coventry Township’s Kenilworth Park to the Schuylkill Trail and up to Hanover Meadows Park along Route 100 and eventually to the trail system in French Creek State Park.
Another called, appropriately, Pottsgrove Trail will proceed through Lower Pottsgrove, ultimately connecting Gerald Richards Park, Pottsgrove High School and the extensive trail network in Upper Pottsgrove.
Of course all this work depends upon the continued employment of a Regional Recreation Director.
The five years of sliding scale funding provided by the state to pay for the position — officially called a “circuit rider” — will run out at the end of 2019.
In the coming months, Lane will be making presentations about the program to the six municipalities that participate — Pottstown, North Coventry, West Pottsgrove, Upper Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove and Douglass (Mont.) — to seek support for continuing the post with some help from the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation.
Although none of these presentations has yet been made, West Pottsgrove Township Commissioner Vice Chairman Thomas Palladino is already on board.
During a recent township meeting at which Lloyd explained that Lane’s help had been crucial in obtaining $120,000 in funds for the Murgia Park improvements — and that the township’s annual contribution to his salary is $5,000.
“I’ll spend $5,000 to get $120,000 any day,” said Palladino, who indicated he was ready then and there to approve continued funding for the position.