For the first time in more than 10 years, Cherry Hill is updating its Open Space and Recreation Plan (OSRP) after two public input meetings on the issue.
The second public session happened on July 9 at the township municipal building. During the first meeting in June, residents were asked to post a green sticker if they agreed with the objective and a red sticker if they disagreed with it.
Jamie Magaziner, an urban planner and designer with Pennoni Associates, shared results from the June meeting that showed residents agreed strongly with “encouraging the creation of neighborhood friend groups to encourage residents to get invested in the care of their community park.”
The meeting also revealed support for “reviewing local ordinances to determine where improvements could be made to regulations.” But residents were more opposed than in favor of “increasing the number of multi-use fields by removing fie striping on selected fields.”
At the July public session, there were three main areas of focus regarding an OSRP update: preservation goals, improvement goals and health and education goals. Preservation goals included preserving open space for conservation and recreation and preserving environmentally sensitive areas.
Improvement goals included improving existing open space and maintaining/maximizing the use of existing recreation facilities, as well as improving the bicycle and pedestrian facilities throughout town. Health and education goals included helping residents recognize the importance of and maintenance of passive open space parcels and promoting health through open space.
“Open space is really important for a community,” said Magaziner. “On a human scale, on an environmental scale, (it) also has some benefits in terms of property values and other economic needs. It helps to prevent environmental degradation and can also work to preserve cultural, environmental and historic resources.”
When looking at open spaces, Magaziner explained that municipal parks are broken down into smaller-scale parks (such as neighborhood sites); community parks owned by the township; and recreation facilities at schools, which make up 40% of the total park area.
“The main reason (for why school playgrounds are being counted as part of the municipal park inventory) is that they are publicly accessible, and this inventory is meant to include all publicly recreational facilities,” Magaziner clarified, since there was confusion on that point at the June meeting.
During the July session, residents were encouraged to stop by different stations and share their feedback through surveys. Stations included one for preservation goals, so residents could rank their priorities for preservation objectives and share more candidly suggestions for improving those objectives.
The OSRP is defined by the New Jersey Green Acres Program as a “local government’s vision of open space and recreation.”
“It should establish a practical justification for the protection and preservation of open space and recreation opportunities,” according to the definition. “An OSRP provides a framework for implementation. It also includes an inventory of existing conditions and an assessment of resources, goals, objectives and actions to make improvements.”
“It specifically focuses on open space, preservation and recreation and it goes into a much deeper dive than the master plan does,” noted Kathy Cullen, director of community development for Cherry Hill.
“The master plan touches on the importance of all of those,” she added, “but this actually includes an inventory of the spaces, the maps you see here showing the difference in quarter-mile radius, half-mile radius, of where the parks are. It also shows the exact locations of where the trails are, what parcels are recently acquired.”
The meeting presentation noted that since 2011, the township had acquired 225.6 acres of land for parks and open space, and it currently has about 21.5 acres of open space per 1,000 residents. That exceeds the National Recreation and Parks Association’s recommendation of 10 acres of open space per 1,000 residents.
The OSRP is important because it also gives the township more leverage when it comes to applying for grants to achieve these goals later down the road.
Those who missed the meeting can still share feedback at https://www.chnj.gov/FormCenter/Recreation-14/2024-Cherry-Hill-Open-Space-and-Recreati-205.
Anyone who wants to comment or ask questions can email Wannamaker at [email protected], Magaziner at [email protected] or Cullen at [email protected].
