Completion expected by December 2017

By Wiley Wood

Plans for a park in the sunken wetland below Station Place were dropped with a thud last April when time ran out to complete the project before the funding deadline.

But on October 4, First Selectman Sue Dyer announced that the entire original grant of $500,000 from the state’s Main Street Investment Fund had been extended until December 31, 2017, giving City Meadow Park a new lease on life.

The park, intended to “knit the center of town with the surrounding neighborhoods and businesses,” in the words of Dyer’s 2014 application, was delayed when state and federal regulatory agencies refused to approve the initial design, then approved the resubmitted plans only months before the grant expired.

The initial design called for pedestrian access and a winding boardwalk through the meadow, as well as a series of settling ponds and wet swales to filter the run-off from Station Place and Route 44. The landscaped park would provide recreational space at the center of town and also improve water quality at the meadow’s outlet, which feeds the Blackberry River.

However, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) objected to the detention of storm water in a wetland on policy grounds. The design was simplified and the plans redrawn. In the version finally approved by DEEP and the Army Corps of Engineers in April, there is still a forebay and a channel for run-off, but the meandering watercourse and the succession of ponds have been eliminated.

At a working meeting of the City Meadow Committee on October 17, Steven Trinkaus, the project’s consulting engineer, confirmed that the DEEP-approved City Meadow would still function as a storm water park. “The wet swale will improve the water quality of water going into the Blackberry River,” said Trinkaus. “Sediments will be trapped in the forebay before the water crosses Shepard Road.”

In further discussions, the committee members decided to limit the number of access points for pedestrians to two: one on Shepard Road near the firehouse, the other through the pocket park on Route 44 just north of the former Haystack Pizza building. A third entrance at Station Place, through a breach in the stone wall at the top of the meadow’s steep southern bank, has been abandoned for now.

Construction of the boardwalk alone is expected to cost about $200,000. “We only have $500,000 to work with,” said First Selectman Sue Dyer, who also attended the October 17 meeting. “That leaves $300,000 for the rest of it,” said Trinkaus, “and it’s only moving dirt around. You’re going to get it done for that.”

The construction of a staircase from Station Place to the boardwalk might be reconsidered at a later date, said Molly Ackerly, the committee’s chairman. The stairs, interrupted by a series of terraces, would be supported on pilings drilled through the embankment to the bearing material below.

Ackerly outlined a rough schedule for the project. If the park is to be completed by the end of 2017, construction will have to start next spring, drawings will have to go out to bid in January, and approval from Norfolk’s Inland Wetlands Commission and its Planning and Zoning Commission are needed by year’s end.