North County Regional Park Awarded Federal Funding

Caroline County was awarded $1.3 million to help develop the North County Regional Park on State Route 313 north of Greensboro.

 

According to a Sept. 10 press release from the Department of Natural Resources, the “new park will be established with walking paths, four multipurpose athletic fields, a playground, a bike skills course, a restroom and a pavilion,” to meet “a growing need for both organized sports and outdoor leisure activities.”

 

For Caroline County Recreation and Parks Director Jamie Beechey the project is a “legacy park.”

 

“One of the things that really is extraordinary about where it is situated (is) people are going to have the benefit of both passive and active recreation,” she said. “It is an amazing place to experience nature and wildlife in almost the same location where you can experience competitive athletic pursuits, as well.”

 

“So, it is a really, really unique property, and being adjacent to the Choptank River, it is beautiful,” she said.

 

The three-year process of obtaining the funding was “definitely a labor of love, and it often took some calming and soothing of the nerves and the soul to get through the process, because it is very harrowing,” she said.

 

“It took us a long time to get to today because it was new construction and not redevelopment,” Beechey said. We had to go through a cultural resources survey, ensuring that we were not treading on hallowed or sacred ground. And then we had to go through a pretty significant environmental survey as well, ensuring that we weren't displacing any endangered species of any kind.”

 

“It's a lot of money,” she said. “Caroline County does not have the bandwidth to be able to fund these types of projects out of its capital fund. And so, it was just really important that we're able to receive this grant from the National Park Service.”

 

“Originally, we applied through the state of Maryland, and the state of Maryland ranks the projects, … and if you make that cut, then you get referred to funding through the National Park Service,” Beechey said.

 

The park comprises “207 acres total, and we'll be developing about 76,” she said.

 

The park will also have a “pedestrian bridge over the waterway that's out there, and we will have … a bicycle pump track, (something) very popular on the East Coast,” she said.

 

“There are some other funds involved as well,” Beechey said. There’s match money. There's local parks and playgrounds infrastructure money that came out in 2021 and 2022 from the state of Maryland. There will be program Open Space funds. And then there's a small allocation from the capital budget, and we have some residual agriculture lease funds as well, but the majority comes from state and federal funds.”

 

“I'm so grateful for this Board of County Commissioners,” she said. “Obviously, this park could never happen without them.”

 

“The multipurpose fields are going to be very welcome,” Beechey said. The potential sale of the Medifast property in Ridgely may result in the North Caroline football home field being unavailable.

 

“Certainly, one of the things that we have seen is, post-pandemic, … a boom in youth soccer, football, baseball and softball,” she said. “We need to have the space for them.”

 

Beechey said once the engineering drawings are finished, permits are obtained and the project is put out for bidding, “we are definitely holding out hope that by early winter we’ll be breaking ground.”

 

“It definitely has been a long haul to get here,” she said. “Building this type of regional park, obviously, is a labor of love. And there was an incredible committee that worked on the master plan and visioning that really developed through a very diverse thought process of what that could look and feel like for everybody. I'll call it a homegrown design because there was a great deal of input into what people really wanted to see there. And I really appreciated the fact that it does have the balance between passive and active recreation.”

 

North County Regional Park “is going to be something for everyone, which will be really, really unique to Caroline County,” Beechey said.

 

Other jurisdictions receiving the rest of the $4.8 million in park grants were Baltimore City, $1.5 million, and the towns of Berlin, $133,000; Taneytown, $864,781; and Westminster, $1 million.

 

Beechey said she was happy to have funding just shy Baltimore’s amount. “It's especially rewarding to get that large of an award for Caroline County.”

 

“It’s like, ‘Hey, we're over here; we're just as important,’” she said. “We may not have as many humans in a smaller area, but we certainly want great things for people.”

 

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) was established by Congress in 1964 to fulfill a bipartisan commitment to safeguard the country’s natural areas, water resources and cultural heritage, and to provide recreation opportunities to all Americans.

 

Each year, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources administers grants from these funds to assist state and local government in acquiring parkland and developing recreational amenities.