208-Acre Mount Olive Farm Preserved

From Daily Record

MOUNT OLIVE — A 208-acre farm formerly known as West King Estates, located at the headwaters of the South Branch of the Raritan River, will be preserved as open space.
The Land Conservancy of New Jersey announced Thursday that it has closed on the purchase of the property, which it said will nearly triple the size of the South Branch Preserve in Mount Olive. The Morris County Preservation Trust Fund recently awarded a $1.6 million grant for the purchase.


“The preservation of the West King property continues our ongoing effort to preserve the headwaters of the South Branch of the Raritan River,” Mayor David M. Scapicchio said.
“It is a priority for the township and region,” he said.


The conservancy now has preserved 370 acres in the headwaters of the South Branch of the Raritan River in partnership with the New Jersey Water Supply Authority, Mount Olive, the county freeholders, the Morris County Preservation Trust, the Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority and the Raritan Headwaters Association and the state of New Jersey,
The river provides drinking water to more than 1.5 million New Jersey residents, making it one of the most important watersheds in the state, according to a news release from the conservancy.


“Using this property as an open space buffer will not only protect the drinking water but also mitigate flooding downstream,” Freeholder Ann Grossi said in a statement.
The Land Conservancy will own the former West King Estates property in partnership with the New Jersey Water Supply Authority.


“The authority’s water customers enable us to participate in important projects such as this by funding source water protection,” said Henry Patterson, executive director of the water authority.


The Land Conservancy will use a $70,000 grant from the National Forest Foundation to restore more than 40 acres of sloping farm fields to native forest, further protecting the river. Hiking trails will be created on the property, and 30 acres of corn fields will be converted to an organic farm.


Other plans include a community garden that will be open to area residents and two small plots for local schools.

35 More Acres Preserved in Princeton

From the D&R Greenway Land Trust.


I remember this issue was bubbling when I was living in Princeton a few years ago. It's great to see something of a positive resolution finally come.

On September 22, D&R Greenway preserved a critical woodland property, adding 35 more acres to the 953 acres and 14 properties in Princeton already preserved by D&R Greenway with help from our partners. A new trail will open next spring connecting this land to Herrontown Woods and the Ricciardi tract preserved by our partners.

D&R Greenway would like to thank its partners in this acquisition: 

• NJ Green Acres Program
• Mercer County
• Princeton Township
• Friends of Princeton Open Space
• A generous anonymous donor

Wendy Mager, President of Friends of Princeton Open Space (FOPOS), talks about the collaboration: "FOPOS is delighted that we could support D&R Greenway in the acquisition of the All Saints' land.  It forms a crucial link in a connecting trail system.  We look forward to working with D&R Greenway to create trails where folks can enjoy these beautiful woods."

Located in the ecologically valuable Princeton Ridge, the volcanic diabase rock that underlies the Ridge supports unique woodlands. The extensive woods include countless giant, venerable specimens of trees that thrive in rocky soil typical of the Ridge - sweet gum, black birch, bigleaf aspens, musclewood, as well as oaks, hickories and tuliptrees. As a deep interior forest (that is, one that is more than 600 feet wide), it supports birds that depend on old trees for food, such as the pileated woodpecker, and birds that nest in old forests including wood thrush and scarlet tanager. 

D&R Greenway has now preserved 15,091 acres of land throughout New Jersey since 1989.

Sussex County Park Adds 47 Acres

From New Jersey Herald.


It's always good to see additional land being preserved in places noted in New Jersey for their natural beauty, such as Sussex County.

FREDON — The township has nearly doubled the size of Lodestar Park with the announced purchase of 47 acres of land.

Working with the Land Conservancy of New Jersey and using Open Space and Green Acres funds from the state, the newly purchased property includes much of the creek, which travels the southern side of Paulinskill Lake Road. But the land also stretches across the western boundary of the park to Stillwater Road.

The final purchase price was just over $200,000 with the township paying $5,000 for the final land survey.

“We have been lucky enough to find conservation-minded property owners to help us,” said Larry  Lawson, a co-chair of the township’s Open Space Committee. “We’ve been looking to get enough (land) to connect Lodestar to the Paulinskill Trail."

That trail runs parallel to the Paulinskill and follows the old railroad tracks.

Although there will be no direct link to the Paulinskill Trail, town officials said the parcel will allow the expansion of the existing trail network within the park.

“That would be a great Eagle Scout project,” said Township Mayor Carl Lazzaro, referring to community projects that Boy Scouts must complete to be eligible to earn their Eagle Scout badge.

One of the nature trails that now exists within Lodestar was an Eagle Scout project.

“This is a nice piece of property,” he said. “It will be a good addition to the park and make for nice walking trails and nice nature trails.”

Sandy Coltelli, Township Committee member and co-chair of the Open Space Committee, expressed happiness that the township was “able to add this valued land to our inventory.”

In a news release, the Land Conservancy called Lodestar “a wonderful and very different kind of park.”

Sandy Urgo, the land preservation manager at the Land Conservancy said, “The park is unique because it provides lessons in history, agriculture and nature. It has been developed with respect for its environs and its past.

Under its former name as the Morris Land Conservancy, the group also helped the town purchase the 16-acre former Freeborn property in 2008, which has remained mostly woods and has a walking trail on it that can be extended into the new purchase

The Land Conservancy contracts with towns to negotiate on their behalf in land purchase agreements. Over the past 30 years, the group has worked to preserve more than 18,000 acres of open space and helped towns receive more than $220 million for land conservation projects

Lawson said the new land will remain undeveloped since it has several “razorback” ledges with small valleys in between

“The nature of the terrain does not lend itself to development. It will remain a ‘passive’ park where people can enjoy nature,” he said.

250-Acre 'Skillman Village' to Return to Nature

From The Courier News. 

This is absolutely awesome news. When I lived in that area, all the talk was of turning it into "Skillman Village." It was a fait accompli. That was, of course, before The Great Recession.

MONTGOMERY — For more than a century it was a home to epileptics and psychiatric patients — and a draw to thrill seekers hoping to glimpse a ghost in the creepy, abandoned buildings.

On Tuesday morning, Somerset County and township officials closed on a deal that ensures the former site of the North Princeton Developmental Center returns to nature.


The $15.9 million sale of the 250-acre Skillman Village by the township to the county ends years of negotiations and one-time visions of thousand-home neighborhoods, a performing-arts center and even an ice rink.


The county’s Improvement Authority will pay the township using funds from the county Open Space, Recreation, Farmland and Historic Preservation Trust Fund.


The county, which plans to develop the land into Skillman Park, also appropriated $250,000 from the open-space fund to pay an arborist to determine how best to manage and preserve the park’s trees.


After abandoning the property in 1998, the state in 2005 sold it to Montgomery for $5.95 million.


The township spent more than $16 million razing the 100 buildings — including a morgue, a power plant, houses, a hospital and a firehouse — that for decades had made the facility its own self-contained village.


The New Jersey Village for Epileptics was founded in 1898. In 1953, it became the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute, and later, the North Princeton Developmental Center.
The facilities at one time housed as many as 1,500 patients and employees, officials said.
Soon, however, the park will be ready for cyclists, joggers and hikers.


“Give us a year, and this will be a dream come true,” Freeholder Patricia L. Walsh said.
Skillman Park becomes part of more than 6,000 acres of open space in Montgomery, nearly a third of the land area in the township of 22,000 people.


The park and the other parcels of preserved land surrounding it near Skillman and Burnt Hill roads total about 1,100 acres, officials said.


Township resident Michael Mathews, who attended the signing of the deed transfer at the park, called the property “the Central Park of the township of Montgomery.”


“We have enough cul-de-sac houses. We have enough golf courses. We have enough shopping malls,” he said. “Seventy-five years from now the kids are going to want to have open space. It’s vital to the health of a community.”


Mayor Mark Caliguire said township and state officials started discussions in 1993, as the state scaled back use of such institutions as the developmental center in favor of modern facilities.


Caliguire said the land “was not only an eyesore but dangerous.”


“It got hard to keep the plywood on the windows, because it was listed in Weird N.J. So you had kids coming in and breaking into the buildings,” he said.


Now, “the dangerous and dilapidated buildings are gone, and we will see this place preserved as open space forever.”

19.5 Acres Preserved in Voorhees Township

From Journal Register News Service.


Every acre counts.

VOORHEES—The Camden County Board of Freeholders voted Thursday night to assist Voorhees Township in the acquisition of 19.5 acres of open space with funding from the County’s Open Space Preservation Trust Fund.

The Ashland Woods property in the Ashland section of Voorhees, which borders Somerdale’s Kennedy Park and Preston Avenue in Voorhees, is an Open Space Preservation project that Voorhees brought to the state’s Green Acres Program and the county for help with funding.

The total purchase price is $1.6 million. The state is providing half of that amount — $800,000 — the county is providing $650,000 and Voorhees Township is paying $150,000.

The 19.5 acres of open space being preserved are behind the former Coliseum property, which lies along the Cooper River and the county’s greenway. It is being referred to as Ashland

Woods. The state has already provided its share of the funding to Voorhees Township.

The property is currently used by local residents for passive recreation and serves to join a neighborhood park in Voorhees to Kennedy Park across the Cooper River in Somerdale. The site is currently owned by a developer who had put forward a plan to put 300 homes on that site.

The developer will subdivide the property to retain the Coliseum building, which currently houses several businesses, thereby providing the township with ratables into the future.

“Voorhees Township is thrilled to once again to join the State of New Jersey and the Camden County Freeholders in preserving more open space in our community,” said Voorhees Mayor Michael Mignona.

“This latest partnership allows us to preserve almost 20 wooded acres of beautiful land near the Coliseum in the Ashland section of Voorhees. This purchase will mean that Voorhees has preserved 223 acres of land as open space since 2003.”

Read more --->

$27 Million Plan Unveiled to Preserve Greystone

From The Daily Record.


It's a neat area, already home to the new Central Park of Morris County. This, obviously, would become an extension of that. 

PARSIPPANY — The abandoned Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital and surrounding land will be preserved and turned into parkland, Gov. Chris Christie announced Thursday.

“This facility has been, unfortunately, an eyesore in this area, the way it’s been maintained and treated over time by the state,” Christie said at Central Park of Morris County, property that was once part of Greystone, a psychiatric facility shuttered in 2008.




Christie said the $27 million project preserving 165 acres would be financed in partnership with local governments, New Jersey Economic Development Authority bonds and open space funding.


While the state would own the site, the Morris County Park Commission would oversee it.
The governor said the first step will be to conduct an environmental assessment of the land before any remediation is done.


Christie noted the historic nature of Greystone, including the looming Kirkbride Building and said that building will be assessed to see if it has any income-generating uses.


Designed a few years after the Civil War by Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan, the former hospital is a French Renaissance Second Empire-style building that features marble pillars, a rotunda and a chapel. Upon its completion, it was christened in 1876 by President Ulysses S. Grant. The neo-Gothic building was the largest poured-concrete structure in the U.S. before the Pentagon was built. At one point, it housed as many as 5,000 patients.


The structure was turned over to the state Treasury Department after a new Greystone hospital opened in Parsippany in 2008 and the remaining patients — less than 500 — were transferred to the new facility.


Environmental assessment work is expected to be completed in 2012, while the demolition and remediation could occur in 2013.


Despite Christie’s pledge to tear down existing, vacant buildings, remediating the land and converting it to open space, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, took aim at the plan.


“A day after revealing his plan to undermine public access to state parks through privatization, Governor Christie looked for green cover by announcing the grounds of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany would be preserved as open space,” Tittel said in a statement. “Open space funding is down under Governor Christie and his administration has been implementing policies that weaken protections for our public lands and limit public access such as the DEP beach access rule.”


Christie was joined Thursday by Bob Martin, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, and state Treasurer Andrew P. Sidamon-Eristoff.

89 Acres Preserved in East Amwell, Hunterdon County

From the Hunterdon County Democrat. 


Love seeing stories from East Amwell, which has often been covered for its expansive open space preservation efforts.

EAST AMWELL TWP. — Overlooking the vast expanse of grasslands that slopes toward the forested Sourland Ridge, more than a dozen advocates of open space held a celebration Nov. 2 to applaud the acquisition of the 89-acre parcel on Cider Mill Road.

In a cooperative partnership, the Delaware & Raritan Greenway Land Trust cobbled together money for the $2,056,110 acquisition from state funds and nonprofit groups: $400,000 from state land acquisition funds, $400,000 from East Amwell’s Green Acres grant, $200,000 from the Natural Resource Damages Fund to match half of the township’s contribution, $407,882 from the county’s nonprofit grant program, $411,222 from Conservation Resources Inc., and $237,006 from a Green Acres nonprofit grant.

Since some of the money pledged was unavailable for the December 2010 closing, a low-interest loan from the Open Space Institute enabled the land trust to meet the purchase price by the deadline. Earlier this year, the other partners helped pay back the loan.

The township shares ownership of the property with the land trust and the state Division of Fish and Wildlife. Mayor Larry Tatsch said it is the first grasslands habitat that the township has been able to preserve for public use.

Sean Grace, an East Amwell resident and sanctuary director of the New Jersey Audubon Society, said grasslands are one of the least preserved habitats in North America, noting that less than 1 percent of the original grasslands remains.

“They’re critically endangered habitats and all animals that are then associated with it,” he said.

Among the birds that will frequent the Cider Mill preserve are American kestrels, bobolinks, Eastern meadowlarks, Northern harriers, short-eared owls, grasshopper sparrows and indigo buntings, many of which are listed as endangered, threatened or as a species of special concern.

As a result of changes in farming practices, providing and managing a place for grassland birds is an uphill battle in New Jersey, said Tony Petrongolo, Bureau of Land Management chief for the state Division of Fish and Wildlife.

“Where most of the landscape used to provide a habitat before, today every 90 acres like this is a struggle,” he said.

Michael Catania, president of Conservation Resources Inc., called the preservation of the property a substantial victory.

“One hundred years from now, people are going to look back and say, ‘Thank God, somebody had the foresight to preserve this because this doesn’t look like other parts of our state,’” he said.

In addition to protecting a critical habitat, Linda Mead, president and CEO of the land trust, said the public can walk along the property, taking in the scenic views, stars and grassland birds.

“It’s a perfect example of what the statewide Green Acres program sets out to do,” she said.
Diana Raichel, a conservation biologist for the land trust, will help manage the property. Key to effort is the need to delay mowing until after the birds have nested and fledged, and to keep woody vegetation at bay, she said.

“Anything that breaks up a field is less suitable for these area-sensitive birds,” she said, adding that grassland birds require large open spaces. “You want to maintain this ecological state to keep it from succeeding into a forest.”