Urban Trail Route Turns In Different Direction

By Kendra Bobowick

Urban trail planners’ intentions to create a walkway along Elm Drive and the Ram Pasture veered away from a route within the open field that skirts Hawley Pond last week as they assessed their options.

“It’s not looking too promising,” said Parks and Recreation Director Barbara Kasbarian after she walked the area with recreation committee member Carlan Gaines, Highway Department Director Frederick Hurley, and Assistant Director of Parks Carl Samuelson.

Ms Kasbarian entered the onsite meeting Thursday afternoon with the impressions that the pasture’s caretaker, The Newtown Village Cemetery Association, was resistant to having an approximately six-foot-wide compressed gravel surface bisecting the lawn along Elm Drive from the end nearest the police station and heading back toward the pond and Hawley Road.

“If they don’t let us do it then we need an alternative plan,” she explained. As she and others eyed the trees, pond, and downward slope falling away from the road and leveling toward the tree lighted for Christmas, other possibilities for mapping out a trail emerged. Fleeting thoughts of transferring the recreational path intended primarily for foot traffic to the other side of Elm Drive facing the pasture entered the conversation.

Ms Gaines was disappointed with the thought of placing a trail along the opposite roadside lined with private homes.

“This side is much nicer,” she said. Other problems became clear as the group maneuvered along the at-times sodden ground. Mr Hurley noted that many of the established trees’ surface roots were within the six to ten inches that Mr Samuelson believed would be necessary to install the walkway. Briefly the recreation and town officials discussed making a loop where a path could start at Dickinson Park, for example, and circle around Liberty field and down Deep Brook Road adjacent to Ram Pasture.

By that afternoon the jumble of scenarios provoked another idea. With every step they took, Ms Kasbarian and company found reasons pushing them toward moving the trail tentatively to a route along Deep Brook Road, behind Liberty Field, across a portion of open space, and out toward Point O’ Rocks Road.

This particular trail is part of what Parks and Recreation members envision as a larger system throughout Newtown. Grant funding that planners have three years to use also supports this first stretch, Ms Kasbarian explained. The number of joggers and walkers already using Elm Drive regularly prompted her desire to see this portion of Newtown trails established first.

“I would hate to see one of them get hurt,” Ms Kasbarian said.

“This was the first trail we wanted to get done,” she said. During the grant application process and discussions for locating a trail, no one had contacted the cemetery association, Ms Kasbarian said. Most recently, the recreation department learned that association members had various concerns. As of nearly one year ago, the Parks and Recreation Committee members had envisioned a series of trails through town and possibly connecting the central areas along Queen Street, a concept still favored by Ms Gaines. The leg of recreational paths along Elm Drive is the first phase.

Another conceived route, not yet funded, would pass through Sandy Hook center and toward Treadwell Park. Another rails-to-trails possibility exists along abandoned railroad tracks in the Botsford section of town. The rails-to-trails idea promotes creating a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors. The Botsford area is ideal for continuing the established Monroe rails-to-trails segment along old freight lines.