Airport Park: they've got busy plans for a busy park

Kathryn Braisted MATAMORAS — Airport Park is one busy place. Besides public use of the playground and open space, over ten entities, including the Tri-State Angel softball league, Cal Ripken baseball league, Pike Area Youth Athletic League, soccer, basketball and tennis clubs, and DVHS athletics, all use some Airport Park facilities. An all-inclusive spring facelift is planned for the park, including the assembly of a futuristic playground and repaving of the runway and parking lots. The Matamoras Recreation Advisory Board, led by president George Featherman, met last Sunday to discuss park upgrades based on a walk-through of the grounds. Featherman announced the board has “a lot of work to do,” namely, the at least 13 projects discussed at the meeting. Before embarking on aesthetic tasks of painting pavilions or replacing broken flag posts, the board planned an initial park clean-up, scheduled for Wednesday, April 1, to remove leaves and branches from softball and baseball backstops. Featherman said the debris posed a hazard for the ball teams while playing on the diamond. Their next significant endeavor, the “major cleanup,” will take place this weekend; the public is invited to help move the playground equipment to the far pavilion, clean out the concession stand and complete other basic tasks. Helpers should be at the park at 9 a.m., Saturday and noon on Sunday to lend a hand. The board’s lengthy to-do list includes repairing broken football field lights, dismantled and vandalized picnic tables, filling chipmunk holes in the walking path; adding a final zoom-lens camera to the park’s video surveillance system. There may be a park bulletin board directory, to be built by the Delaware Valley High School vocational-technical classes, pending agreement. The Vo-Tech students may construct new baseball dug-outs as well. Featherman was interested in resealing the roof of the bigger pavilion, but a consensus was not reached at the meeting. The park’s tennis courts are rampant with asphalt cracks, and the borough cannot afford to resurface the courts. However, Ken Baumel, program director of the Pike Tennis Association, offered an $800 grant for supplies to fill in the fissures. According to chairman of the Friends of Airport Park, Bill Lamac said approximately $400,000 worth in public and private donations have been given to fund park projects not taken on by volunteers or covered by grants. Additionally, a donation by the Biondo Foundation will make possible a new playground for both “typical and atypical children.” The playground will provide unspecified water features and multiple levels, ramps for wheelchair accessibility, and various recreational obstacles. Biondo is allotting $250,000-$500,000 for this project, including landscaping and fencing. They’ve asked to title the playground “Firefly Fields.” Construction is expected to be completed by July or August. “It’s going to be a miniature Disney World,” said Lamac. “A small, small Disney World.” The Board is applying for a $100,000 Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) grant to match that portion of Biondo’s donation and allot money toward other projects. A $50,000 block grant awarded by Pike County, along with a $50,000 DCNR grant, will allow for parking lot paving. The surfacing should be finished in May or June, according to Mayor Richard Gassmann. Two additional block grants, amounting to about $50,000, will pay for the paving of two basketball courts and areas underneath the pavilions. Four new basketball hoops and two benches will also be purchased. The funds will be available later in the year, and a scheduled time to begin paving has not been set. “[These improvements] are really going to put this park on the map, where it belongs,” said Gassmann.