So I just want to welcome everybody to the May 14th Parks and Recreation Board meeting tonight.

This meeting is intended to have an opportunity for members of the community that have had interest in the Odorisio Park Improvements Project to be able to join by Zoom, hopefully convenient this evening for folks who, you know, maybe can't always make it into the township building and you know just easier to maybe attend on their phone or on their computers at home to give an opportunity to have a bit of a discussion.

So tonight we we don't have a quorum, so it's not necessarily a designated formal parks and recreation board meeting.

And all that really just means is that we're not going to take any votes or make any formal recommendations or or anything to give direction on any items.

This is just going to be more of a uh a public forum.

I do want to kind of give a little bit of a presentation that uh I kind of have given a couple a couple different iterations of over the last uh few months in terms of the playground development.

That way, you know, we can kind of set the stage to have some discussion and then also provide a little bit of background on uh just the project where we are and basically where we're headed.

Uh so I wanted to let the folks that know, well, the folks that are home at home that have joined us, thank you so much.

Um we really appreciate you signing up and registering and taking an interest in the park.

It's really important to, you know, hear the passion and the interest that folks have uh in terms of what they want to see with the playground, uh especially since it's such a big space and it's going to comprise, you know, pretty large part of the project.

And also just when I when I say playground, I mean, you know, play space, active space.

I know there's a lot of thoughts and ideas that have come along in our last few years of talking about the project.

So I just basically, you know, I'm kind of like throwing the blanket term playground over the space.

Obviously, you know, we're here tonight to uh determine what we want that to look like.

Um doesn't necessarily have to be uh, you know, your your traditional, you know, commercial playground equipment.

We can be creative with the space.

Um so I just I wanted to kind of just welcome everybody.

Um you should have an opportunity the way this Zoom is set up to raise your hand and make a comment.

Uh the only thing that I would say is maybe just give me an opportunity to step through some of the details a little bit uh because I did want to show a little bit of a presentation.

Since we do have a small group, and I know the board has kind of heard this over and over.

Uh, I just wanted to uh maybe try and you know jump through it a little, you know, skip through it a little bit faster, uh, but also just give the opportunity for folks who might be joining us for the first time to sort of like hear a little bit about the the road we've traveled and and some of the progress that we've made.

Um so with that, I'm just gonna basically uh get started.

Um my name's Tammy Cohen.

I'm the director of parks and recreation.

Um, and I really enjoyed working with the members of our board that have been wired in on this project uh with it's been a it's been a while.

Uh we started in February of 2022.

Uh so it's you know, we we've been talking about Odorisio for quite a while.

Um, one of the things I'm gonna do also is I'm just gonna I'm gonna share my screen uh so that you can see um the presentation that I have.

So you should be able to see.

Uh let's see.

I think I got a swap, right?

Ian.

Yeah, just okay.

Um so you know, starting in 2022, you know, we we've had four years of of a lot of discussions about the park space.

You know, we know uh there's there's certain areas of the per of the park, you know, we want to improve.

Obviously, the baseball uh field is gonna stay the same.

The the wooded area is gonna stay the same.

Um, and we worked through uh a process, uh, which I really want to thank the board members over the years for bearing with us.

And I think tonight we have Commissioner Childs who's on with us.

I know he was a former parks and recreation board member and chair, uh now commit now turned commissioner, um, obviously in a position to champion this project uh and help us get us over the finish line.

Uh, but Howard, I really want to give an opportunity to thank you, you know, for all your time that you've put in on this, engaging residents and representing the board throughout the process of uh four years of public meetings, you know, discussing, you know, how how we get the improvements over the finish line for Odorisio Park.

So this has been a deeply collaborative project uh all along.

Uh we've had a myriad of different meetings.

We've been in the park, we've had, you know, in township building meetings, RTCA meetings, and we've been at, you know, by Zoom a couple of different times to try and make it convenient for folks.

And essentially as we've worked through the process, we we landed on a conceptual plan that basically been forwarded on to the board of commissioners for their now it would be in their hands to start taking it forward in terms of the next steps of review.

So we got to a point of the conceptual plan by all means not a hundred percent final.

There's still a lot of things to work through in terms of a lot of the improvement areas as we know the parking lots, the we have a comfort station that there's interest in turning into a pavilion restroom area and of course the playground area which makes up a sizable piece to the the location there's intentions to create accessibility throughout the park basically allowing people to you know from an ADA standpoint have accessibility from the parking lot along West Wayne Avenue all the way to to Fairview's parking lot and in and through all of the spaces such as the pavilion, the playground and then hoping to plant some trees and you know make it a nature based space as well.

We know there's a lot to be proud of of the park currently we want to maintain a lot of those features and then obviously take an opportunity to improve some of the spaces that need a lot of work.

We know that there's a great deal of stormwater runoff that's coming down onto the ball field now currently and into the space you can see the erosion that we've we've looked at in numerous pictures over the last few years that is happening on the hillside and eroding the trees and the root systems and greatly jeopardizing those spaces.

So the improvements that are made in what I'll call the upper portion of the park where the playground's going to be in the pavilion is definitely an area that's going to require a lot of stormwater management and stormwater considerations.

So I don't want to get too deep down uh down in the gutter I'll say on that right now we do want to focus on the playground but there's still a lot of pieces of this project that have yet to unfold to get us where we're going and essentially continuing to work you know through that process.

So the next step here is to kind of figure out like okay how do we want the play space to look how big will it be and then after we can start to kind of like you know drill into a square footage of space that we know we want to look at or what might work in terms of play equipment active equipment active spaces what have you then we can start to engage something that would be called a schematic design which will really help us understand how the site will work in terms of the stormwater runoff which we know is a big piece and how all the features will flow essentially and be situated.

So that would be a next step and that would be something that would be there'd be a proposal from a designer it would have to be authorized by the board of commissioners there's a there's a lot of pieces that go in there and then throughout that process that's where we would start to present the project's conceptual design to them to get their support recognizing there's a there's a great deal of investment right now that's going to have to go into this project.

So you know when we talk about the the playground that's one puzzle piece that's that's going to you know be a cost to this project and then there's also the overall construction there's design and all of these considerations that will go into it and I know our commissioners many of them have been involved in this project in it in addition to Commissioner Childs I know Commissioner Myers has had a great deal of work and time with us over some of the years that she's been on the board and I know has been supportive and given there's been a lot of parks across the park system that have had improvements over the last decade and a half I think we have a lot of strong support for Odorisi now Odorisio now being essentially the next park to get the spacelift and get you know comprehensive improvements taken place.

I'm not sure if that helps.

But um there is a um, let's see, I think this this might do it.

I don't know if you're able to see this, but we've got the uh we've got the parking lot at Fairview, uh, and then the boards uh at the board's desire.

We had an interest in flipping where the playground is now and moving it over.

Uh so they're you know, it basically is going to be uh in the direction now where the parking lot is at Fairview, and then obviously the playground would be situated somewhat where the playground is currently and just envisioning that to be more of a seating space in and around the pavilion area where folks could be closer to the playground or closer to the ball fields to be able to watch soccer, watch baseball and what have you.

Um these spaces have not been 100% designed.