Board ponders bridge for Fischer’s Park
Pedestrian bridge was among the improvements specified in 2010 plan
Towamencin officials are starting to look into a way to bridge, literally, two parts of Fischer’s Park.
Engineering work has now been authorized to look into what it would cost to build a pedestrian bridge over the Towamencin Creek as it runs through the park, linking the more developed southern side with the relatively undeveloped north.
“We’re only using maybe 60 percent of the park right now, and by putting the pedestrian bridge in, it opens up the other side of
the park,” said supervisors Chairman Chuck Wilson.
“The purpose is to bring the whole park together, and allow the whole park to be fully utilized, which it’s not being today,” Wilson said.
Fischer’s Park is located west of Bustard Road and Kriebel Road, and the 74 acres that are now used as a park were originally settled in the 1800s, and were purchased by Hugo and Helen Fischer in the early 1900s. Star ting in the 1920s, Fischer added amenities including a food pavilion, a boardwalk over a dam on the creek, and a swimming pool, before Hugo was swept away during a flash flood in 1930 and Helen invited a cousin to help manage the park. Towamencin
Township acquired the 57 acres of park south of the creek in 1989, and developed its first master plan for the park that year; the 23 acres north of the creek were bought in 1996, and an overall master plan was commissioned in 1998 and last updated in 2009-2010.
That master plan calls for a series of both short and long-term improvements, some of which the township has tacked in recent years. Upgraded playground equipment has been installed near the park’s Bustard Road entrance, and repairs have been made to the dam running across the creek. The 2010 master plan update calls for a pedestrian bridge to be built just west of the dam, and Ford and township Engineer Tom Zarko said Wednesday the formal study would identify whether the bridge would be located near remnants of an earlier bridge
that was washed away in the 1930s, or elsewhere.
“The parks committee thought, since we’re not doing any capital projects this year, to plan, to get ready, to have a plan in place, so that the following year or years, we can move ahead with getting that pedestrian bridge in place,” Ford said.
“The first step is to do some engineering: to find out how we get there, and put a plan together,” he said
Zarko said he’s already done preliminary evaluations of the creek, but finding a bridge site may be complicated by state and federal floodplain maps and regulations.
“What this would do is basically do all of the survey work, topography work, floodplain evaluation for the purposes of sizing up the structure, and come up with a cost estimate for the actual bridge — to refine the location, as well as the cost,” Zarko said.
On the parks’ northern side, the 2010 master plan calls for the long-term addition of several improve-
ments including a new parking lot, a trail around a farm field, a dog park and a picnic grove where the forest and former farmland meet.
“There are plans for the other side of the park, but first we need to have a bridge to get people over there,” said supervisor David Mosesso, who was on the Open Space and Parks Advisory committee that developed the 2010 plan update. .
“It’s been one of those discussions — ‘ W hich comes first, the chicken or the egg?’ Do we put in the bridge first, or do we put something over there, but we’d need some way to get to that?” Mosesso said.
“The sooner we get that bridge in, the quicker that side of the park will get utilized. People can investigate, walk their dogs, whatever they want to do,” he said.
The board voted unanimously to approve a proposal from Zarko to evaluate sites for the possible pedestrian bridge, at an estimated total cost of
$12,000. That cost would likely be covered by a trust established by resident Elizabeth Arneth when her family owned the park after inheriting it from the Fischer family, and which can only be used for improvements to the park, according to Ford and Wilson. $600,000 was given to the township upon her death, and was used to match grants that funded earlier improvements, while a second trust contains roughly $5 million and the township receives roughly $25,000 each quarter of the year in interest in-
come.
“This is not tax dollars. This money was left to the township by Mrs. Arneth, and those funds can only be used for maintenance and improvements at Fischer’s Park. We’re not able to use that money for anything else,” Wilson said.
Towamencin’s supervisors next meet at 7:30 p.m. on April 12 at the township administration building, 1090 Troxel Road.
For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.Towamencin.org.