WINDSOR – A multiyear project to build a recreation hub downtown featuring a skatepark, a dog park and walking paths is about 30 days from completion.
The old railyard’s new park, Railyard Recreation, is in the second phase of construction, finishing the remaining 4,000 of 8,000 square feet on a roughly 3-acre property on Depot Avenue, which includes the Windsor Exchange.
The project, which cost roughly $1 million and was spearheaded by the nonprofit Railyard Recreation, is meant to revitalize the downtown area.
“I really hope the kids in downtown Windsor take advantage of (the park), get outside, put their phones down and have some fun,” Terry McDonnell, who leads the nonprofit and owns nearby Artisans Park off Route 5, said in a phone interview.
The town’s approval to enter a purchase and sale agreement to buy the land on the east side of the tracks from Windsor Railyards Inc. — a company owned by Bob Haight, an architect and former town zoning administrator — came in July 2023. The town acquired the parcel by forgiving roughly $53,000 of the remaining balance on a $75,000 town Revolving Loan Fund loan that Haight used to buy the property about a decade earlier.
Construction of the park began after a cleanup of the former railyard, a brownfield site with contaminants in the soil that needed to be addressed before new development, the Valley News reported in May 2024.
Through the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission’s Brownfields Program, the Town of Windsor “received technical assistance and funding to evaluate and remediate contaminated soils at the Windsor Railyards site,” Cindy Ingersoll, community development specialist with the Mount Ascutney Regional Commission, wrote in an email to the Valley News.
Roughly $70,000 through the Brownfields program and a $400,000 subgrant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Revolving Loan Fund financed environmental assessment and cleanup efforts at the site, Ingersoll added — close to half of the project’s overall cost.
“We planted grass and then we build the dog park and then we started construction of the skatepark and then the walking path, the driveway, parking,” Terry McDonnell said. “Landscaping went in earlier this year.”
The nonprofit raised around $300,000, he said, and the town “kicked in a couple hundred thousand” toward the project.
The second phase is “about 30 days from being completed,” McDonnell said, and will give area residents a variety of recreational opportunities.
“And if the town decides they want to add more features in the future, like either a playground or pickleball, there’s land to add more features and make it even more of a recreation park,” he said.
The Town of Windsor will own the park, with Windsor Recreation handling long-term maintenance, Town Manager Trevor Lashua said in a phone interview.
“It’s a great addition to the public spaces in town,” Lashua said, pointing to amenities such as the skatepark, dog park and picnic area.
Lashua added that planning and environmental assessment work has begun on neighboring land to the south, with a partially constructed Park and Ride. Also nearby, at Central and Main, a 25-unit building with one- and two-bedroom apartments for households earning up to 80% of Windsor’s area median income was completed last year.
The park is part of downtown revitalization efforts, he said.
“It’s always great to have good outdoor spaces and have them in such close proximity to your Main Street corridor,” he said.
