High School Park and Ogontz Park Master Plan
Updated August 2008
Steering Committee Meeting Schedule: Carriage House of Richard Wall House, 1 Wall Park Drive at 7 PM, Elkins Park:
*August 27, 2008
*September 24, 2008
Review of preliminary draft plan:
October 14, 2008 at 7:30 P.M. at Township Administration Building.
I
Review of final draft plan:
December 3, 2008 at 7:00 P.M. at Curtis Hall, Church Road and Greenwood Avenue,
Wyncote.
Steering Committee Meeting:
First: November 2007
Second: January 2008
Third: February 2008
Fourth: April 2008
High School and Ogontz Parks are located in Cheltenham Township in the vicinity of Elkins Park (High School Road, Montgomery Avenue, Harrison Avenue). Before becoming Township Parks, the two adjoining parcels once housed Cheltenham High School and its athletic fields. High School Park is primarily a passive recreational park (e.g., nature trails and ecological preservation of native flora and fauna) while Ogontz park is more recreationally active (e.g., tennis courts, athletic fields). The two parks and the Tookany Creek have been the focus of environmental and recreational restoration efforts for at least the last decade. There has been a lot of work completed at High School Park to remove invasive plants (e.g., plants that tend to take over an area or crowd out other vegetation) and to replace them with native plants (e.g., plants that are less competitive, are from the area, provide food and habitat, or serve a special purpose).
Recently, Cheltenham Township and the Friends of High School successfully obtained a matching grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to complete a Master Plan for the two parks. The High School Park portion of the plan will focus primarily upon existing environmental features and future ecological restoration while the Ogontz Park portion will focus upon existing and future recreational use. The Master Plan will also contain an ecological restoration plan for the Tookany Creek and its’ riparian buffer area. The master plan will have very specific recommendations to preserve what the community likes about the parks and to initiate projects to improve park features.
As of August 2008, the project is half completed. There will be two more citizen steering committee meetings before the preliminary draft plan is presented to the Board of Commissioners for comment. All meetings are open to the public. Minutes from prior steering committee meetings are available on-line.
Please feel free to contact Suzanne Forbes, AICP, Forbes Environmental & Land Use Planning, at 215-230-9549 or forbes1@comcast.net if you have any questions or for more information about this project.