By Brandon T. Bisceglia
One of the designs presented by BL Companies on Jan. 24 that would reroute the road around the playscape and separate the two largest parking lots in Fred Wolfe Park.
Dozens of Orange residents came together in the lower level meeting room at town hall on Jan. 24 to see – and weigh in on – a plan for redesigning the traffic flow within Fred Wolfe Park.
The presentation, hosted by Meriden-based civil engineering firm BL Companies, offered four designs for the layout of the roadways and parking in the portion of the park immediately surrounding the recently-completed playscape. This area is also adjacent to parking for the soccer and lacrosse fields.
Dominick Celtruda, the senior project manager from BL, explained that there were simple things – like painting lines to demarcate parking spots – that could improve the traffic and parking situation in the park.
“When we first met with the committee out there, I purposefully parked at a different angle in the parking lot, and everyone who showed up fell in line with what I did,” Celtruda said. “It’s not a good, organized space within that.”
Some concepts would make only minor changes to the current design. Others went further, rerouting roads to the outside perimeter of the playscape and breaking up the road between the two largest parking lots so that the route to each would be totally separate.
The final, most drastic concept shown – dubbed Concept 3a – appeared to get the most favorable response from those in attendance.
Celtruda stressed that each of the concepts was really the equivalent of a rough sketch and should not be taken as finalized in any sense.
“I caution everybody, because they look finished,” he said, noting that pencil sketches have largely been replaced by computer renditions. “These are programming concepts. Nothing is set in stone.”
To that end, the other aim of the meeting was to garner input from the residents before creating a final recommendation. And residents had plenty of thoughts, both on the designs and on other aspects of the park.
Several speakers noted that Fred Wolfe Park has no restrictions on entry at night, and that cars enter at all times, sometimes sitting in the dark in view of people’s homes.
“I was just curious if there were any plans for fencing or gating off those entrances at certain times,” asked John Bakis, who lives near the park and echoed a suggestion several other speakers mentioned. “Once people know that it’s a spot that’s dark, and there’s no lighting – not that we want lighting there, because we don’t. But we just want to know that the park is closed.”
Some of the suggestions and questions went to aspects of the park that were outside of the scope of the BL project. James O’Connor, chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission, responded to numerous questions by pointing to the park’s master plan, which was completed in 2013 and has not been updated despite all the changes that have taken place on the land in the last decade.
“We need that master study plan redone,” O’Connor told the audience at one point. “That’s something that we need to ask for funding for. That would be the next step, as well as going ahead with these additions.”
Resident Nick Calcaterra, along with several others, noted that the master plan needs to be revisited so that another entrance to the park – long planned but never built – can finally come to fruition.
“Whatever plan we come up with,” he said, “we need to take into account that there needs to be another entrance at some point, and whatever design we select shouldn’t preclude another entrance from coming in.”