Greenway Group Seeks to Have Input on Master Plan

Nestled into a conference room in the Lawrence Township Municipal Building, members of the township’s Greenway Committee met for their monthly meeting last Thursday, April 14. 

The committee, co-chaired by David Mizenko and founder Anne Demarais, was started in 1990 and operates as a non-profit dedicated to the education, creation and maintenance of walking and biking paths and trails connecting Lawrence’s green space and parks. 

“The goal is to connect parts of Lawrence Township where you can bike and walk, connecting parks with centers of town,” said Mizenko.  “No cars here.”

Demarais, who over the years has been active with various groups in town such as the Planning Board and has been a longtime vocal advocate of open space preservation in Lawrence, founded the Greenway Committee in the hope of creating a greenway network in town.

At the meeting the Greenway Committee made plans to attend the next township Open Space Committee meeting, which will be held on May 4.  This is in response to Lawrence Township rewriting an element of the township’s Master Plan concerning open space – the Greenway Committee wants to take a look at the plan to see where greenways are mentioned.

“When the Greenway Committee started, there wasn’t any mention in the Master Plan about greenways,” said Demarais.

Lawrence Councilwoman Pam Mount, the council’s liaison to the Greenway Committee, this particular element of the Master Plan was last edited during the 1970s.  Over the past 20 years the township has acquired undeveloped parcels of land from private owners, such as purchase of property off Eggerts Crossing Road from retired Police Chief Nick Loveless in 2007. That land – where Loveless previously grew Christmas trees – is now known as the Loveless Nature Preserve.

“I think we could write [the plan] like something compelling,” Mount said, noting that an updated open space element to the Master Plan would pique the public’s interest in green space.

To this end the Greenway Committee, in conjunction with the Open Space Committee, published the Lawrence Trail Guide in 2009.  This guide highlights all of the green space and trails available for exploration in the township and represents four years of work collecting data on the committee’s part.

“We need to let people get out and see the beauty off the road,” said Mount, who owns Terhune Orchards on Cold Soil Road.

Also at the meeting, the Greenway Committee changed the date of its annual hike from May 29 to Saturday, June 11^, in order to coincide with the dedication of the , which crosses Five Mile Run behind Rider University.

The township received a $275,000 grant from the New Jersey Department of Transportation to build the pedestrian and bicycle bridge along the trail that follows the path along which the old during the first half of the 20th century.

The Lawrence Nature Center’s Mother Nature Festival, to be held on May 7 at the center on Drexel Avenue, was also on the committee’s agenda.

More information on the Greenway Committee can be found at the Friends of Lawrence Greenway website.