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Master plan includes improvements totaling up to $122 million

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

By Mark Belko, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Allegheny County Parks Commission held its inaugural meeting yesterday, and it quickly became apparent that this was not a job for the faint-hearted:

Not with the 12,000-acre parks system facing up to $122 million in spending to repair and upgrade aging infrastructure; not with officials trying to find a place to dump clay silt to be dredged from the bottom of North Park Lake; and not with so many ideas, from Frisbee golf to mountain bike trails, competing for dwindling public dollars.

"There's a lot out there that's going to get our attention," said John Oliver, former secretary of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources who was elected commission chairman yesterday.

The seven-member commission will advise and guide Parks Director Andrew Baechle and other county officials in the operation of the nine parks and will work closely with a yet-to-be-named foundation that will seek private funds for parks improvements.

Baechle has been on the job for nine weeks and he's already reached one conclusion:

"The job is big," he said. "The need is big."

Baechle certainly will have expertise on the commission to help him in the decision-making. Among those on the panel are Duane Ashley, the city parks and recreation director, Joe Natoli, a former county and city parks director, and Larry Schweiger, president of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

By far the biggest challenge facing the commission is finding a way to fund the estimated $83 million to $122 million in improvements recommended as part of a parks master plan. That's far more than available capital funding and it may be where the foundation proves to be most helpful.

There are other challenges as well. One the commission spent a lot of time discussing yesterday was what to do with the 400,000 cubic yards of silt to be dredged from the bottom of North Park Lake.

A proposal to deposit about 300,000 tons of the material in a North Park nature center field has run afoul of naturalists, birders and environmentalists.

Baechle said one alternative being explored is to purchase contiguous private land once used for mining and dump the silt there. But commission members also wondered whether the silt could be given away or even sold to someone with a need for such material.

"There's got to be a beneficial use to this material," Oliver said. "I think we've got to think creatively."

The commission also heard about plans to rehabilitate the South Park ice rink at a cost of at least $1 million, a $200,000 project to build a snow tubing area at Boyce Park, and a $500,000 project to build a dozen new restrooms in the parks.

It also will be at the forefront of efforts to get some North Park facilities ready for the senior Olympics in 2005.

"It's going to be here before we know it," Baechle said.