WEST LEBANON — A small gravel parking lot next to Smith Field could become the city’s newest park under a proposal pitched by recreation officials last week.
Lebanon’s Recreation and Parks Department hopes to clear the roughly 1-acre, city-owned lot near the end of Maple Street in West Lebanon to make room for a fenced-in playground and paved parking.
The improvements are intended to benefit not only the neighborhood but also the children watching or taking a break from Lebanon Youth Baseball games, according to Interim Recreation Director Rick Desharnais.
“If you go over there on any Saturday afternoon when there’s a ball game happening, you’ll see a lot of kids kind of running in the grassy area between the field and the road,” he said Monday. “There’s not a great place for those siblings of the folks who are playing to play.”
Desharnais added the lot’s current unpaved status can make access difficult during rainy seasons.
“Right now, it’s kind of a mud pit over there,” he said.
The property was once owned by West Lebanon resident Estelle Allard, who conveyed it to the Northern New England Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in 1987. (She died in 2009 and is buried alongside her husband in the West Lebanon Cemetery).
The deed stipulated that the lot must be used for church purposes and, if not, would be transferred to the city for a public park.
That occurred in 2011, when the Seventh-day Adventist congregation moved out of its church building across the street and into a new location in Plainfield.
In 2014, the Providence Presbyterian Church moved into the empty church building. While it doesn’t own the parcel across the street, the church pays for winter plowing and its congregants make use of its gravel lot, according to Pastor Tim Herndon.
“We’re looking forward to it as a church,” Herndon, who lives on Maple Street, said of the park proposal on Monday. “Having an improved parking area and a playground is a great plus for us.”
Thomas Schutzius, who lives next to the proposed park, also endorsed its construction.
“My family’s certainly excited about the potential for having a park next door,” he said in a phone interview. “There’s lots of young families in the neighborhood, so I think it would be well-used.”
Desharnais estimates the park project will cost nearly $115,000 and hopes to get construction underway this summer.
The money, he said, will come from a West Lebanon development fund created to renovate an old home at the intersection of Elm Street West and Seminary Hill Road into new parks and rec offices.
Structural problems with the 1830s-era building prevented the construction from going forward, and the city recently razed the building. However, there’s still about $390,000 remaining in the fund, Lebanon Planning Director David Brooks informed the City Council last week.
Councilors were quick to greenlight the spending, saying the Maple Street neighborhood deserves a safe, accessible playground.
Councilor Jim Winny, who lives on Maple Street, said he drives by weekend baseball games and has noticed that “parking is a little rough” and children sometimes play too close to the road.
“Giving them something a little better would be great,” he said during Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
Meanwhile, Mayor Tim McNamara recalled that there was once a playground across the street years ago.
“Since then, there really has been nowhere for the smaller kids to play while their siblings are having a baseball game,” said McNamara, a West Lebanon native.
Desharnais said the city will hold a public forum on the playground before designs go for review before Lebanon’s Planning Board.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.