Government
Parks Officials by 9-0 Vote Support Waveny Park Conservancy’s Plans for Trails, Cornfields
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Parks officials last week voted unanimously to support three major projects that an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization dedicated to Waveny Park has slated for this calendar year. The Waveny Park Conservancy plans in 2017 to create and improve trails at the cherished town park that ultimately will give pedestrians a high-quality surface that runs from the South Avenue entrance to the western parking lot up at the main house, officials with the organization said during the Feb. 8 Parks & Recreation Commission meeting. Additionally—thanks largely to a $300,000 grant from the Jeniam Foundation, established by the late Andrew Clarkson—the organization is seeking to comb through a 7-acre site in the southeast corner of Waveny in order to remove a highly invasive grass called ‘phragmites,’ according to Keith Simpson, a local landscape architect and member of the conservancy’s board. Though the conservancy will stay away from chemical treatments to abate the phragmites that already have taken root in ‘The Cornfields,’ “if we get them down to a really minor amount, we might be able to spot-treat that,” Simpson told the commission at the meeting, held in Lapham Community Center.