Howard residents soon will have a new community park in the Fulton area, now that the county received more than $1.3 million in state aid to acquire 29 more acres.
The state Board of Public Works recently awarded Howard the lion’s share of Program Open Space funding, totaling more than $1.7 million for five counties.
So far the county has 50 acres for the park through prior land acquisitions, where tennis and basketball courts, athletic fields, trails and picnic areas are expected to be built, among other amenities, said Gary Arthur, director of Howard’s Department of Recreation and Parks.
The 29-acre wooded area called the Iager property, near the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission on Sweitzer Lane in Laurel, will have a forest buffer along the Patuxent River as well as be included in the planned expansion for outdoor recreation, said Shaun Fenlon, director for land acquisition and planning for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
“This means from the edge of the river and back, they’ll add trees,” he said. “And they’ll grow up and help protect the water quality of the river.”
Development of the 79-acre park, however, is still at least five to eight years away, Arthur said.
“It depends on our budget allocations over the next few years,” he said. “This is a best-case scenario.”
Howard has about 8,600 acres of parkland. Centennial Regional Park and the Middle Patuxent Environmental Park also were established through local Program Open Space grant funding.
Since 2007, the Board of Public Works has preserved more than 6,600 acres for public recreation, watershed and wildlife protection statewide, according to DNR.
Project Open Space helps DNR buy land for its park and forests and distributes local grants.
The money for the different projects comes from a percentage of the real estate transfer tax and is used for local and state parks across the state, Fenlon said.
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