Once the park is open again it will be available for people to picnic at or go fishing or bird watching. Swimming isn’t allowed because there isn’t a lifeguard. The park is open sunrise to sundown with scheduled nighttime activities occasionally offered.
New environmental education center
Also on the horizon is completion of the environmental education center currently under construction. Like everything at the park, said Smith, the work is being done by volunteers.
Erichsen’s Fuel Service of Highland is donating their time to put in the center’s heating and air-conditioning and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers donated electrician time to do the wiring. After their work is complete and the insulation and interiors are done, the center will offer a place for Highland schools or other districts to conduct science and environmental programs.
Smith referenced last year’s “A Day in the Life of the Hudson River” program that brings together thousands of students of all ages from all over the state for one day to collect data and study conditions on the river. “Highland participated in that for the first time last year because we had a park to do it in,” he said. “These kids had a terrific time, and they were thrilled because the DEC actually used the data they collected in a river-wide study.
“There’s so many things that could happen,” he added. “I’d love to see a sailing school here. And Highland used to have a crew team many years ago that launched out of Poughkeepsie, but with budget cuts that went by the way. Now there’s a place a crew team in Highland could launch out of. It’s just a great place.”
A volunteer effort
Smith said the park association has “kept their word” not to use taxpayer dollars to build the park. “We said all along we didn’t want to do that. So far we’ve managed to build the entire park with grants and volunteers who have donated tremendous amounts of equipment, materials and time to make the park happen.”
The volunteers include Baker and Sons Landscaping of Highland who will put new topsoil down this spring at no charge, Smith said, “and they’ve already done a substantial amount of beautification projects for us.”
Then there’s the park association’s vice president for development, Donna Deeprose, who Smith credits with spending “thousands of hours” getting and administering grants for the park, including a grant she obtained to buy equipment for the education center; “something that the school district could never have afforded,” he said. “She’s a real un-sung hero around here; just outstanding.”
The future
The skyline or “gondola” project is still in the works, too. If realized, it would be what Smith has called a “21st-century solution” to transporting visitors arriving on those private and tourist boats at the park up to the Walkway and local businesses in quiet, electrically powered, pollution-free gondola cars that would put no strain on the steep and narrow roads to and from the river in the way that tourist buses would.
As project manager, Smith said he has obtained verbal agreements to use or buy the property of the land owners where the skyline towers would go up.
So what’s next?
“I’m negotiating right now with a couple of different entities that would be interested in building and operating this thing and owning the equipment,” Smith said. (Steve Turk of the Rocking Horse Ranch resort is one and C.B. Slutzky of Hunter Mountain is another.)
“The town would own the land. It would be a public-private partnership,” Smith said, “which would probably be a whole lot faster to build, too.”
For more information, visit www.highlandlandingpark.org.
