Radnor Township Parks & Recreation Board Meeting Summary – October 9, 2025
Radnor Township Parks & Recreation Board Meeting – October 9, 2025
The Radnor Township Parks & Recreation Board met on Thursday, October 9, 2025, at 6:30 PM in the Radnorshire Room of the Radnor Township Building. The board approved minutes, received staff and commissioner reports, discussed Fenimore Woods Pond management and the Odorisio Park concept plan, and set next steps.
Consent Calendar
- Approved the Parks & Recreation Board minutes from July 10, 2025, by voice vote with all in favor.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Jenna, a parent, praised the township’s summer camps. She said her daughter, a special-needs camper, attended Radnor Day Camp half-day but asked to attend full-day every day; her son loved skateboarding camp, praising instructor Mike’s patience. She also said her children enjoyed the Willows camp and described the camp options as affordable and well run.
Discussion Items
- Parks & Recreation Department Report: Staff introduced new hires Bakir Altoombosh and Christina Rios, and recognized former staff member Heather DeCanzio. The summer day camp served 220 children with 57 staff members, including 16 special-needs staff. The Fall Harvest/Great Pumpkin Patch on October 5 drew an estimated 3,000 people. The 48th Radnor Run is scheduled for October 26, but the American Lung Association will no longer be involved; staff are evaluating possible organizers or an internal return in 2027. The Villanova Day of Service planted 75 donated red cedars, adding to roughly 200 trees planted in the area this spring.
- Board of Commissioners Report: Commissioner Riley was absent. Ordinance 2025-08, addressing electric scooters and e-bikes on township roads and trails, was tabled from the September 29 meeting and is not on the October 13 agenda. The Board of Commissioners will receive a draft budget presentation on October 13. Seven vendor contracts will be considered at the next commissioner meeting.
- Fenimore Woods Pond Management: Staff presented the pond’s condition and options. The 2.2-acre pond was built in the late 1800s and has had no subsurface maintenance in at least 51 years. Eutrophication from nutrients and sedimentation is causing algae growth that was tested and found non-toxic. Depth has dropped from about 10.5 feet in 2017 to about 8 feet in the latest study. Options discussed included hydro raking, mechanical harvesting, full dredging, vegetative buffers, and aeration/fountains. Staff noted a $700,000 RACP grant application was submitted for Fenimore Woods, and any leftover project funds could potentially be directed to pond work. The adjacent stable renovation update: asbestos abatement is complete, environmental hazards removed, and demolition is underway with a possible opening next summer.
- Odorisio Park Preliminary Concept Plan Review: Board members and staff discussed goals, parking, playground placement, pavilion/gazebo, tree preservation, accessibility, and dugout seating. Members agreed the park should be planned holistically rather than preserving accidental past layouts. There was support for optimizing parking near the first baseline and West Wayne Avenue and for keeping two-way traffic near the basketball courts. The board leaned toward flipping the restroom/pavilion with the playground, expanding parking if feasible, using a larger multi-use pavilion for concerts and games, eliminating a separate gazebo, keeping tree removal limited, and taking a minimalist approach to dugout seating. Staff will revise the concept plan for the next meeting.
Key Outcomes
- Approved the July 10, 2025 meeting minutes unanimously.
- Directed staff and consultants to produce a revised Odorisio Park concept plan reflecting board feedback for review at the November 6, 2025 meeting.
- No formal action was taken on Fenimore Woods Pond; staff will continue studying short-, mid-, and long-term options.
- Fenimore Woods stable demolition is progressing; an opening as early as summer 2026 is possible.
- The meeting adjourned by motion and second, with all in favor.
Meeting Transcript
Good evening. We want to do the approval of the minutes from July. Approval of the minutes from the Parks and River Boards meeting of Thursday, July 10th. I'll move second. And second. Any nays. All in favor. Aye. And we want to start off with I thought we had someone here from that wanted to speak or something. I thought the lady that was here previously wanted to speak. She was from Haverford Township, and she just had some feedback to provide us with regards to Harford Pack Park, which I can share later. I figured I'd come up to the mics and say figured our report was sort of next. Well, first of all, it's great to see everybody. It's been three months. It's hard to believe. It's been since it's been since July. And then in May and June, we were on the road at the RTCA. So hopefully everybody had a really good summer. Hopefully everybody had a restful summer. But I wanted to uh I wanted to kind of just kick off the meeting a little bit and really highlight um I'm gonna ask Ian to bring up the screen. I'm gonna first start by talking about some of our department composition changes that we've had. Um we've had an interesting ride since April. Um I'm just showing a picture of of our department staff as it was in August. Um we had six people, which was great. That's the most people we've ever had in our whole lifetime of being here. But uh we we quickly lost Heather DeCanzio. Um I don't know if you all recall, but she did take another job and she has moved on. She spent 10 great years with our department. Um there's a lot of things that have her handprints all over them. Um I could go through a list of things uh a mile long. I mean, but just some of the highlights really is the the cultivation of Radner Daycamp every year and hiring the staff. Um for those of you who don't know, we we do bring on 40, 50, 60 staff members depending on the year that join us with Radner Day Camp. So it's it's a lot to bring together. Um it's also a big operation, something that uh runs over the course of the year, really, when it comes to the hiring, the planning, and everything that goes into it. Uh she adapted a lot of new programs for us. She brought our champions programming to life, uh, which are programs that we have for kids with developmental differences. So she really made that a mainstay as part of a lot of the things that we do within our department. Um so many applications, and when I say that, I mean like there's some software applications we adapted to Radner Day Camp, like pickup patrol, which helps us manage attendance. Um we have a uh employee application process that comes in through our online system on Granicus, where we manage a lot of the forms and things like that. So she was really behind setting that up. So not only is she very uh creative and technical, but she was also very kind person within our department, made relationships with people very easily. So she's sorely missed. Uh to give you some uh idea at the uh the end of day camp, we always have a a big performance where the families come and they get an opportunity to see the kids do a dance routine, various dance routines at the camp. And uh there was a uh ceremony where all of the staff members were on the stage and each one uh one by one came up on the stage and gave her a red rose. Uh so it was very sentimental, it was very emotional. Um so really I'll flip to the next picture, which kind of shows her with some of the roses in her hand. She had a lot. We had to help her hold them because we have we had 57 staff members this year. So it was a lot of roses. Uh there were a lot of tears, and um we had some people from the past, uh, they can't uh come back and join us to say goodbye to her.
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