By: Cara Latham
ALLENTOWN The first of three public information meetings detailing the progress of the Doctors Creek-Assunpink Creek Trail Feasibility Project will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 5 at the Allentown First Aid Squad Building on Walker Avenue.
The Crosswicks Creek/Doctors Creek Watershed Regional Greenway Planning Group hopes to gain public feedback from the meeting, said Suzanne Forbes of Forbes Environmental & Land Use Planning, the environmental consultant working with the group.
The group is examining the possibility of creating a trail system along the creeks from Hamilton Township through Millstone, also running through Allentown and Upper Freehold.
The Doctors Creek to Assunpink Trail, as the project is known, would run for about 13 miles along Doctors Creek beginning at the confluence of Doctors and Crosswicks creeks in Hamilton Township and connect to the existing trail system in the southwestern portion of the Assunpink Wildlife Management Area.
The trails would go through a southerly portion of Allentown, near Heritage Park and the lake, and behind the Allentown Presbyterian Church and through Lakeview Drive.
The other end of the lake in Allentown becomes a creek again, and runs through Upper Freehold, finding its way into Millstone and then hooks up with Assunpink tributaries.
The proposed project is a subpart of a larger trail The Capital to Coast Trail outlined in the Greenway Plan that the group hopes will ultimately connect trails running in municipalities from Mercer through Burlington and Monmouth counties and ultimately connecting to areas in North Jersey near Morristown.
"We want to get public feedback as much as possible," said Ms. Forbes. "At this meeting, we really just want to give (the public) an overview of the regional plan and the recommendations in that regional plan."
The plan is very strong on open space preservation for habitat and aesthetics, she said.
The group sent questionnaires to about 250 landowners in the area where the proposed trails would run, and Ms. Forbes said they have received quite a few responses, so they will be presenting an overview of their findings based on the questionnaires, she said.
"The early indications" from the surveys, based on his conversations with Ms. Forbes, "show that there is a positive response from most of the respondents," said Greg Westfall, secretary to the Greenway Group.
"The hope is that with the results of this meeting, we would be able to have a better idea of what the public’s perception of the Greenway Plan is," Mr. Westfall said.
The group’s goal is also "to begin the process of working on what alternative trail options may exist along the Doctors Creek corridor," said Mr. Westfall.
About 40 percent of the meeting will focus on an overview of the regional plan and its adoption. The other 60 percent will focus specifically on The Doctors Creek to Assunpink Trail project, Ms. Forbes added.
After this public meeting, the next will focus on different Greenway open space trail alternatives, and the third meeting will focus on the project they will recommend. After the meetings and once the group has a plan in place, it will be working with the municipalities to implement the plans, she said.
The future meeting dates have not been set, said Mr. Westfall.
