By Kayla J. Marsh
Staff Writer
MATAWAN – Gravelly Brook Park, a more than two-acre site that is located just off Main Street and Route 79, will see some much-needed upgrades and repairs thanks to a $250,000 Monmouth County Municipal Open Space grant.
“We had applied for the grant sometime ago and what had happened was we received the letter of approval for the grant on January 14, 2015 and we had to wait for the county and their planner to approve the plan which delayed things,” Borough Administrator Louis C. Ferrara said. “Now that we have that, things can move ahead.”
At a Feb. 16 Council meeting, the governing body awarded the contract for professional services to Middletown-based T&M Associates for the design and permitting for Phase I Improvements at Gravelly Brook Park in an amount not to exceed $115,230.
“This is a good first step in our goal to restore Matawan,” Mayor Joseph Altomonte said.
Altomonte, who was sworn in as mayor in January, campaigned on the promise of repairing neglected parks and renovating the Main Street corridor.
“It is a community, family oriented park – kids play there and parents watch – and it’ll be a huge benefit to finally begin revitalizing the area,” he said.
According to the Scopes and Fee Estimate for Professional Services submitted by T&M, the estimated construction costs for Phase I improvements is approximately $528,000.
The remaining funding not covered by the 50/50 matching grant will be supplied by the borough with either an equal amount of cash or in-kind services, Ferrara said.
“Phase one of the entire project will tackle some basic things … and the goal is to improve the drainage in the park [and] a lot of [phase one] will deal with irrigation, site clearing, soil erosion, lighting, fencing,” Ferrara said.
The scope of improvements coming to Gravelly Brooke Park include demolishing and removing the existing 2,200 square-foot one-story building on the property, reportedly built in 1976, and reconstructing the existing natural grass baseball field to provide a new natural grass multi-purpose baseball field with a soccer field overlay in the outfield.
The new baseball field, according to the Estimate, will be rotated from the existing position to provide better orientation for play in relation to the sun and will contain a skinned infield and a sodded outfield
“By aggressively pursuing grants like these, we can fix up our town and still be fiscally responsible,” Altomonte said. “It’s a win-win.”
Improvements also include providing a new irrigation system for the grassed areas of the field, as well as providing new electric service for the irrigation, future building and future sports lighting.
The field will be re-graded with a new subsurface drainage system being provided.
Plans also call for providing new fencing along the field, foul poles, new backstop and portable soccer goals; providing new concrete block or fence type dugouts and new team benches as well as new bleachers along the first and third base lines on new concrete pads.
Additional pad areas would be provided to accommodate wheel chair seating and an accessible walkway between the bleachers and existing parking lot will be provided.
“Now the engineers will be meeting with all interested parties — such as baseball and soccer organizations, different irrigation people — to figure out the best way to administer the program and design the project and they will help design the bids that will go out to actually do the work,” Ferrara said.
As the project gets underway and meetings are held to update on the status of the improvements, Altomonte said residents are encouraged to provide their input.
“We are in the concept phase right now and are looking for feedback from the community before we move forward with the final design.” He said. “As we move forward things can be changed, added … and I think it is great we are starting to move on the promises we made to residents.”