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Silver Lake deal sealed
Finally. After years of negotiations, Silver Lake Park in Haymarket is expected to open this fall.“I'm shooting for Oct. 1,”said Park Authority Director Jay Ellington, who said it will cost about $70,000 to get the park ready for the public.
The final deal was approved unanimously on Tuesday by the Board of County Supervisors, but not without one last bit of controversy. The board was set to transfer the site to the county's Park Authority but supervisors Mike May (R-Occoquan) and Marty Nohe (R-Coles) had suggested that the transfer come with restrictions.
Silver Lake is a 233-acre park site in Haymarket. The property was once privately owned but the county obtained the land through a proffer deal several years ago and has been trying to open the site ever since.
The vote to turn over park property and its management to the quasi-government agency is generally a routine procedure. But Silver Lake Park is in the county's rural area and the intention has always been that the park will be used only for passive recreation, such as hiking and horseback riding, rather than active recreation, such as Little League games.
So May and Nohe suggested that the transfer be set with deed restrictions to limit the park's use to passive recreation only.
That idea started what Chairman Corey Stewart (R) referred to as “a mini-Civil War” as conservationists from all over the county showed up to argue opposite sides of the proposal. As Stewart pointed out, when prominent conservationists and planning commissioners Kim Hosen and Gary Friedman land on opposite sides of an issue, you know things have gotten strange.
Hosen and many others sided with May and Nohe, arguing that deed restrictions would ensure that future Park Authority boards can't overdevelop the park.
“People want to know that it won't evolve into SplashDown Waterpark,” she said.
May echoed that sentiment later, pointing out that while the Park Authority's intention is to keep the park a rural area for passive use, at some point in the future, park officials may run into money trouble. The Park Authority gets half of its budget from the county and the other half from user fees and, he said, “the big money is in the active recreation.”
Placing deed restrictions on the park now would ensure that it never falls victim to the Park Authority's need to balance its budget, he said.
But Friedman and others disagreed.
“I support passive recreational use of the property but I believe that it can be overzealously applied,” Friedman said.
He argued that while most residents agree that organized ball games on lighted fields count as “active” and should be banned from that park, the line gets fuzzier when it comes to other activities, such as a pickup game of catch with children.
Gainesville Supervisor John Stirrup (R) backed that argument, saying that the deed restrictions may make residents “feel like they might need to have an attorney present during recreation,” to know whether they are engaging in active or passive recreation.
In the end, the supervisors voted 5-2 against the deed restrictions and then voted unanimously to turn over the property to the Park Authority.
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