FLEMINGTON — The 12-acre Tuccamirgan Park is due for a reawakening. That is apparently the shared opinion of the Flemington-Raritan Parks and Recreation Committee and Flemington Borough Council.
Councilman Joey Novick dreams of a borough-enlivening blues festival taking place there someday. But more-modest dreams are scheduled for realization — of kids playing field hockey and flag football there and visitors strolling or jogging along rehabilitated paths that curve through the property.
Sal Randazzese, former director of recreation for the two-municipality agency, is still in charge of Tuccamirgan Park and the Morales Nature Preserve. He came to a work session of Flemington Borough Council on Monday evening to supply an update on the improvements that will be done this summer by Interboro Landscaping of Three Bridges. The work will be funded by the committee, whose basic budget is an 80-20 split between the township and borough. But this park-enhancement money has been saved up from participation fees.
— The committee is spending $13,300 to rehab the athletic field, bringing in 252 cubic yards of screened topsoil, filling holes, and patching and reseeding the turf.
Besides being available for pickup games of touch football, kite flying or other casual use, the field could be used by midget soccer or lacrosse teams. It would also be a venue for non-competitive flag football and field hockey programs that Parks and Rec Director Kim Heirling is developing for students at the nearby Intermediate School. “There’s enough competition out there,” Randazzese said, “A kid wants to compete, they know where to find it. But you get that kid who wants to play football and doesn’t have the height, the weight, the skills, she’s providing for that in a flag-football situation. And the same thing with the field-hockey kid. Sports is so high-pressure now…”
Because a coach can walk the kids to the park from the school, he has no doubt that the after-school football and field hockey will be popular.
— The walking path will be cleared of grass and debris and enhanced with 270 tons of stone dust at a cost of $14,500. The path is 8 feet wide and 3,565 feet long.
— A 250-foot-long vinyl-covered chain-link fence will be installed near the end of the playing field closest to the community pool. It will be positioned just before the field dips down. Randazzese explained later that it would help keep kids in sight, and if and when concerts are held there, it would help with crowd control.
Randazzese said that if the park is ever used as for concerts, St. Magdalen’s Parish agreed in 1982 to allow parking in its lot, which is just across Bonnell Street from the park’s main entrance — just so long as the concert does not coincide with a church event. It was agreed Monday that he should talk to church officials again just to make sure the deal still holds.
At the meeting, the last big event held at Tuccamirgan was remembered fondly. For a week in the fall of 2000, the park hosted the Moving Wall, a mobile replica of the Vietnam Memorial that’s in Washington, D.C. Daily ceremonies were held and thousands of people turned out.
Randazzese said the rec. committee asked him to find out if the borough would be willing to bankroll additional improvements at “Tucc,” such as “dressing up the (Bonnell Street) entrances.” He noted that the pedestrian entrance that’s closer to the school doesn’t even look like a public entrance. “You have to let people know it’s a park and that it’s legally accessible,” he said.
Mayor Erica Edwards said that, not counting the $10,000 the borough is going to use to refurbish and re-establish the old iron fence around the veterans’ monument on Main Street, Flemington has $47,189 in its county open-space fund account, and she believes that park improvements fit the criteria for its use.
Besides improving the entrances, Council President Brian Swingle suggested that perhaps the park could be open at night with paths illuminated by low-power solar lights that wouldn’t annoy neighbors. Councilwoman Dorothy Fine suggested that the park could be beautified enough, with a gazebo added, for use as a wedding venue.
In wrapping up the work session, the mayor asked Randazzese to come up with specific ideas with price estimates on what would be “the next level” of improvements. Later, Randazzese said he would go back to the Parks and Rec Committee and get their specific ideas for improving Tuccamirgan Park.
Tuccamirgan Park occupies the low land behind Bonnell Street houses on one side and Prospect Hill apartment complex on the other. It was named for an Indian chief who had befriended early settlers; his body was buried in a small cemetery on the other side of Bonnell Street.
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