Fort Gratiot officials must take a vital step in crafting long-term plans to expand a 100-acre segment of land owned by the township on Parker Road.
Earlier this month, the township’s board of trustees held two special meetings with the parks commission to hear proposals from two experts on exploring the segment perspective in West Parker between Keewahdin and Carrigan Roads.
And the board is expected to offer to create a master plan at an assembly next week.
“This is something we’ve been working on with Little League, and it turns out lately it’s a prime time era where there would possibly be recreation grants available,” Supervisor Rob Crawford said in a recent interview. We’re just looking to see if we can take advantage of it and see if we can get playing fields, a pavilion and start a camp. “
The municipality first agreed to an agreement to lease 40 acres of assets in that domain to Fort Gratiot’s Little League in 2018 as a component of exploring plans to upgrade the decades-old youth sports organization complex.
Fort Gratiot officials were also in the early stages of drawing up plans for a camp in front of Parker after the state allocated $50,000 to the municipality to install more water and electric power infrastructure by this year. At the time, Community Development Coordinator Sharon Wilton said, ” That would make us a destination. “
This month, Crawford echoed the long-term hope only for camp or the Little League concept, but for the entire dominance along Parker.
On the other side are Fort Gratiot Canine Commons Dog Park, McIntyre Park and Kettlewell Pond with Fort Gratiot Swamp to the south.
“We have 262 acres between Keewahdin and Carrigan in Parker. C’s a resource. How can we use this resource for the canton?Crawford said. ” We’ve been very smart with passive recreation like walking trails, dog park, RC boat pond to navigate, grass areas, and we can faint and see geese, swans, ducks, and other wildlife. “
In an email Wednesday, Crawford said he had asked the board to award the master plan contract next week. Grand Haven-based PM Blough, who designed the township’s dog park and other projects in Port Huron, submitted a bid for facilities of up to $22,500, while Saginaw-based Spicer Group included a diversity of $20,000 to $30,000 for plan progression.
The latter company has also worked with Fort Gratiot in the past with the $744,906 grant for stormwater and wastewater control in the municipality.
The two corporations had been invited to create a proposal to design, prepare charge estimates and grant studies to build playing fields, a sports complex and a camp.
Earlier, the Little League president said they ended up with insufficient restrooms and limited parking at the State Road facility.
In addition, next week, the city council’s calendar is expected to come with the award of a contract to expand the municipality’s water service to Park between Keewahdin and Carrigan.
“The water pipe is mandatory for (to) expand Parker Road housing through Fort Gratiot,” Crawford said. “The water pipeline will also close a service loop, load volume and redundancy to the water in the northeast domain of Fort Gratiot. “
The Fort Gratiot Board of Directors meets at 7 p. m. the first and third Wednesday of each month. Agendas and minutes should be taken into fortgratiot. us.
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett. com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.
This article was originally published in Port Huron Times Herald: Fort Gratiot to compare long-term plans for a 100-acre site on Parker Road