It's springtime in Amesbury and that has me thinking about the outdoors. The Amesbury Trails group had it's kick-off meeting for 2016 last weekend and there is a lot poppin' in town, regarding open space and our stewardship of it.
Whittier Hill
Our friends at the Essex County Greenbelt Association have recently made public the very exciting news that they have signed a Purchase and Sale agreement on a good chunk of the undeveloped Whittier Hill ridge line. Where is Whittier Hill? It is the hill line that runs overlooks both Whitehall Road and Woodsom Farm.
This is about 20 acres of forested land that has a number of virtues as priority open space for the residents of Amesbury:
- It is perhaps the last unprotected and undeveloped ridge line in Amesbury.
- It abuts Cashman School land - there is already an existing trail from Cashman School leading onto this property, used by some educators at CES for science walks.
- It abuts Woodsom Farm land
- It offers trail connections to: Woodsom Farm, Cashman School, Town Park (via Whitcher Court), and the recently purchased Quinn property at 116 Whitehall Road
If you look at this property in a larger perspective, you can see that it is a very nice link in what we can call Amesbury's 'Emerald Necklace', a circuit of open space that includes: Woodsom Farm, Whittier Hill, Cashman School, Town Park, the High School, the Great Swamp Area, and Town Forest. The vision (ok, maybe for just a few of us at this point) is to create a contiguous circuit of trails that connects all of these properties, for passive recreation use. The Greenbelt already owns or manages some properties in town (the boardwalk that was built Fall of 2015 connecting the Town Forest and Woodsom Farm was on a block of Greenbelt property).
They will be embarking on a fundraising campaign very soon for this purchase. You can view the website for this campaign HERE.
Open Space Committee
In February, I put forward an ordinance to the City Council that would establish an Open Space Committee for the City of Amesbury (you can read the original submission HERE, though the Ordinance Committee has proposed several amendments, including the retention of the Parks and Recreation Commission). With representation from the City Council, Conservation Commission, Planning Board, and general public, it would support the City in developing and implementing policy related to the stewardship of open space properties in Amesbury.
Amesbury owns approximately 1,100 acres of open space (view the database here). The two largest parcels are two of the lots that comprise most of Woodsom Farm but did you know that the third largest parcel of City-owned open space is the Merrimack Landing Conservation Area, at 102 acres? You might recall that I wrote about this property two years ago, in reference to the flagrant and unregulated abuse by the previous owners of the Amesbury Sports Park of this property. For me, those events were something of an awakening. On the one hand, even though I was an avid user of various trails in Amesbury, I had no idea about the open space available to the public in the Merrimack Landing Conservation Area. At the same time, it seemed clear that the City didn't really have any robust plans or means to oversee and steward its own open spaces. The Event Permit Ordinance that I submitted and that passed last year was an attempt to help the City regulate the use of its own property and city assets.
With the emergence of the active Amesbury Trails group, the time is right to take this a step further and set up a public body tasked with stewarding the 1,000+ acres of land that we own with active input from residents. We are the only community in the area (city OR town) that does NOT have an Open Space Committee in place to steward open space properties. As any good business owner (or homeowner, for that matter) will tell you, without good planning and active management, your assets will quickly go to waste and will deteriorate in value.
1,000+ acres of open space represents, in my view, a very tangible asset for economic growth and community development that we've barely begun to tap. Sure, a few people might know where the Town Forest is, or have visited Deer Island, or have wandered the trails from Battis Farm, to Po Hill, to Lake Gardner Beach. But our trails are poorly marked, if at all and are only sporadically maintained. We have no management plans in place for any of our open space properties. And we don't really have any priorities for what properties we might want to preserve in the future.
The Open Space Committee measure will come before the City Council for full consideration at our May 10th meeting. Please consider coming out to support this measure.
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UPDATE: The Open Space Committee measure was unanimously adopted by the City Council. Invitations have been sent out to the Planning Board and the Conservation Commission, inviting them to appoint a member to the new Committee. We will be looking for three people from the community, as well, to join the Committee.
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