hello everyone thank you for tuning in to belmont in thirty i'm your host joanna jewell less senior multimedia journalist for the belmont citizen herald and with good local belmont dot com today we're going to talk about a belmont residen vision for a bike and skate park with a solar farm right here in belmont joining me today to talk about it are my guest belmont residents lucy villa and roger rub in belmont for five years she's a precinct five town meeting member she has two children at the wellington she also has volunteered at the benton library and she has a background she's her ph d in biology and works for a consulting farm in the pharmaceutical industry so welcome to c n n thank you thank you for having me and roger may be familiar to many around the town especially those who visited habitat the mass audubon saying sure here  belmont he's the director he's lived in belmont for twenty nine years he's also a precinct five town meeting member and he has a background in entomology just found out so welcome roger it's great to have  so it before we get into the idea of this bike and skate park with a solar farm i want to talk about the location that you have in mind of where it's going to go so can you tell us about the location yes so the location the location is it's twenty five acres and it's fully surrounded by conservation land so it's got rock meadow on one side and beaverbrook north on the other and the rock matter and beaverbrook north our home of the western greenway which is a set of back and really yes and you know western greenway is a wonderful asset to the town and so it's a conservation and that's around incinerator site and you bike yourself right your you like to buy you enjoy biking i do and i you know i'm a frequent user of the western greenway when the weather's nice i am out there almost daily well roger for those who are familiar with the ins incinerator say what else can you tell us about that but its history and its background you know my it's interesting because when i first came to belmont i volunteered with a group that was doing recycling and it was before we had curbside recycling and our every weekend we had a drop off at the incinerator site so back in the one nine hundred late one nine hundred eighty s when i first arrived in belmont that was one of the first places i would hang out on the weekends so i'm quite familiar with it but you know it was used to burn trash for many years and then they close that operation down and it was a transfer station so it was a place where the d p w used and contractors could dump stuff there for a fee and then it would get cordoned off someplace else but when they storage site and also as a leave composting site but the incinerator itself has been shut down and will eventually be demolished so what do they do now instead of using the incinerator well we have a contract with  that right and takes it away right and if you're a contractor i think you must find a place for that construction debris that you can dispose of it but the the land was one third of it was owned by the town but two thirds of it were owned by the state state allow the town to use for this purpose ok and very recently the state said ok you can have this land can be all belmont's land right and there's about there's like three parcels in that twenty five acres which you can tell us about when we talk about the concept because you're very familiar with it i got to tour it with you we know we walked through the hole so it was it was amazing  but there is some requirements before the town can do anything with it and there was a study done as well about possible uses for it do you want to talk about that that study was done yes so there was a study done in a back in two thousand and twelve and the report was published in this in the community development site it was published in two thousand and seventeen and the study was done mainly by c d m c stadium smith and they were looking at what had to be more in general terms in order to kept the site and in order to remediate the ash that was disposed there during the time when it was used as an incinerator and also looking at post closure uses so what could potentially be done with the site given the restrictions that the state imposed upon the site as part of the conveyance from the state to the town so as part of that the state said that the parcels that are being returned have to be used for municipal uses either buildings or recreational space ok and did that study say ok that there is the potential that you could put a police station there they didn't think a school would be good i'm trying to remember all right well it that into that very soon but now ok so what made you decide to go to how did you come up with the idea and what were made you like just said the incinerator site would be the perfect location right so in the past as we just discussed the incinerator had been used as a place to burn trash so to incinerate waste and you know the thought was wouldn't it be wonderful if in the future this site can provide clean energy for the town of belmont while at the same time serving as open outdoor recreational space in the form of a bike and skate park you just came up with that on your road well you know you know a lot of people have been involved with this so the reality is i as we mentioned earlier i have been frequently on the western greenway and once i saw that this site was going to become available when i became a town meeting member was when we voted to accept the parcel back from the state and you know at that point i knew nothing about it so i looked it up and i saw oh my goodness i'm less than one hundred feet from the site on an almost daily basis and the you know the the western greenway so heavily used wouldn't it be wonderful if we can do something with this that preserves the masterplan of belmont for sustainability and open recreational space and so when i looked at the options on the table it seemed like more could be done that would truly fully take advantage of everything the site had to offer so what was the first thing you did to move forward with your idea let's yeah that's a good question so first i did research on into bike and skate parks i looked at skate parks and in the surrounding neighborhoods so cambridge has a skate park somerville's building some cambridge is building some additional ones watertown has a great little skate park so i went and visited those and at the same time i went to bike parks bike parks in vermont and studied those that had recently been built around the country in order to fully understand what would be involved in building a bike in skate park and then i got in touch realizing that  i think solar would be it was an option on the table and would be such a wonderful thing for belmont's a larger picture in terms of being a sustainable green community i got in touch with roger colton at that point and  we thought it would be fantastic to be able to get the two groups together and see if we could make both ideas work on one site and it didn't help you to form the ad hoc committee which which roger is is on serving on as well absolutely yeah roger clinton was really the one who initiated that he was the one who got everybody together and that's how we met you know he's been really instrumental in getting you want to tell us about some of the people who are on the committee and you've been working together as a committee since around june well it makes sense to have solar and bike and skate up on the same plot but is it feasible is there enough land can we even make this work and can we work make it work in such a way that the each and hansen's the other and at the same time the surrounding environment which is very sensitive wetlands that really need to be protected and so i was talking with other parents at school picking up the kids that kind of thing and so i was mentioning the concept of the bike park and trying to integrate it with solar and i knew mike was an architect and he volunteered to help so he has a background in planning and so we're co parents at the wellington and yeah and so that's how it in our daughters are friends and so this is how it really got started you know he was really excited about us the whole committee toured the site along with mike and you know he really he found a way to really make that idea work and made us both work together and well let's let's talk about that  have a rendering of what mike came up with for the site so let's let's talk about each part of it so we've got concord right along here and so you would get to belmont center in this direction and you would get to lexington the town of lexington over here and so the incinerator as i mentioned is divided into three parcels called a b and c and so parcel b is the only parcel that has any road frontage it's the parcel that the incinerator actually sits on and it is the parcel that eventually could be considered for some sort of post closure use so as i mentioned the d p report considered parcel a to really be for future to be top d p w so that current uses of parcel b would move onto parcel a and parcel a and parcel b are the two parcels that were own by the state and have now been conveyed to belmont last may may two thousand and seventeen that happened so parcel c has always been town home and and so when the state as i mentioned earlier when the state gave parcel in press will be back to the town there were restrictions placed upon it that it had to be for municipal uses however those restrictions don't apply to parcels and so when we started thinking about this idea we really limited ourselves initially only to parcel b and so the idea behind parcel b was that because of the very sensitive nature of the surrounding environment so as i mentioned it's fully surrounded by conservation land and specifically wetlands we wanted to have something that was imperfect that was permeable in order to let groundwater naturally flow off the site and so a bike park is ideal for that and so the bike park was placed in the more low lying only and a budding this would be north of about in briefer book north while the skate park while the skate park was surrounded by the solar panels and right now and it's it's kind of on a hill you know high up and he was thinking of putting solar panels here with spaces in the middle where you can have benches things you can sit and picnic and watch your kids and then the  would like to keep some storage there so this one two three four or so that they would you know store store materials that's great and then there's also a baseball field well this area see is the area which is has when rows for with composting leaves right now yeah this is a nine acre site but six acres are weapons and three acres is where the baseball field is so the baseball field is one option d boardwalk where you could get out onto the wet ones and they'd be places where you could sit and just watch the birds or whatever frogs and whatever else was up there which is really a nice feature i think it's such a great idea  it's very exciting to have something like that in belmont now the question is how do we make it happen before we do that what do you see it but you know when you see it brought this idea of a bike park up you know the other people had idea is that it's a natural surface terrain so it has dirt and that contains obstacles ramps little rolling hills berms and the reality is bike parks are fun for the entire family so they're fun for little kids they're fun for teenagers families and adults and the real key is that they have something for everyone at every skill lip level so whether you're a child just learning how to ride and you're on a push bike without pedals yet or you are a teenager wanting to work on your skills it provides something for everyone and in addition it is safe so it's off the road away from cars cars backing up out of their driveway over the sidewalks and it really is a place for yeah and it's really a place for families to spend time together and teens to hang out and it's something that's growing in popularity around the country so it fits very nicely with the surrounding area because there are mountain bikers in that area and so it has access to the greater network of mountain biking trails is one more thing that i wanted to mention about the baseball field in the dog park i think one of the things when the group met as a group one of the ideas that we really wanted to emphasize and encourage was the idea that it is a place for community to gather and how do we get a diversity of residents to use it and i think where the idea of either a dog park or a baseball field or something along those lines on site c came about so as to really good idea yeah everybody bikes and skates right that's exactly right yeah and the beauty about today's skate parks is that they're not just for skateboards anymore so now it nowadays a skate parks it's got roller blades it's got scooters by you know what anything that has wheels are can be found on today skate park so there really are very rekha has recently built a lot of more trails there's a great book state farm in the russell mill which was entirely built in charms for it which was also built with mountain biking specifically in mind and so those places may have aspects of this bike park but not not the entire vision together so they may have something that's called a pump tribe which is essentially a concentric set of mountains that you go over and that you they're great for learning how to bike because it does make you use the skills that you have in terms of getting over them and if you're just beginning it kind of just roll over them but if you're more advanced you can jump over the top or in you know whatever you end up wanting to do so i can have that  or central new hampshire that are something like this but those are not those are private so a public ones there probably are none in this area that really take the entire concept did did you also say that this could potentially tying in with the community path concept that's not the community path but the what's going on in the western greenway there are the concept is to build trails that would connect into the western greenway but it won't be it won't be connecting to the community that has a different location or is you know so it is so the wonderful thing is that you know how how did kids get here and so the wonderful thing is once the community path is built it will go a long route sixty and so the western greenway if you take it from so you've got beaverbrook north you've got rock meadow and then lone tree hill and then if you fall over lone tree hill down off of coal road and you actually which is an old access road that goes the community path to this site that's very good which i think is quite exciting right now again back to my my my big question again is like are we putting the cart before the horse have you heard that expression i think it's great that you're doing all this work and you're doing it on a volunteer basis so that the question is and you've talked to town people about it it's not like you're doing it secretly you've been very open about it you want to tell us like who you got involved in from the get go you yeah right to who did you go to first in your town so are glen clancy has been incredibly helpful you know he really knows a lot about this incinerator site and he's so he's been really instrumental in helping us understand the site as we mentioned j marco and  p w we've toured this with them we've also presented this idea to the recreation department you know how old she was very enthusiastic about this idea and we talked to the recreation commission who was also enthusiastic about this idea that idea of adding more outdoor recreational space that really would benefit kids teenagers adults the whole range of ages and so we've also talked to  is very enthusiastic you know definitely saw the need for a place for teenagers to be able to congregate and so we have spoken to people around town and you know they've been receptive absolutely i think it's been an overwhelmingly positive response and also from parents talking to them there's the realization of a real need for a safe place for kids to be able to take their scooters take their rollerblades so i'm one of those parents right so the question is now what it what do you do next what do you how do you make this happen community you know the community really this is something that should benefit the whole community and so the whole community should get excited about this but the other thing is really to formally be able to propose this to the select men i think there will be future meetings where the selectmen are going to solicit input from the community in terms of post closure use and really to have this idea in front of the slackman before those meetings happen so there may be people that have other ideas but to actually sort of flesh all of that out and to sort of move it to sort of some resolution so you know if we start now maybe in two thousand or two thousand   it's just a lot of solar panels in one place you've probably seen them along the mast night and how how would that benefit them or well you know we have a commune climate action plan and we are supposed to reduce our  carbon emissions by eighty percent by two thousand and fifty this would be part of that this would be a way for the same way that we've had a lot of people in town put solar panels on their roof is reducing our carbon footprint this would allow us to build a informally and they're interested you know they it's hard because they don't really have a permanent general manager that's right they're a little bit in flux right now but but they're definitely interested in you know larger scale solar there's a possibility that they might be interested in building it and owning it and owning the electricity that's produced by it so lng it to their customers and the other site that might have a large array is the high school there's been a lot of interest in making electric cars school that would have the capacity to produce all or some of the electricity yeah that's site it's totally separate but it it's in belmont it's hard to figure out if you want to produce a lot of solar electricity where would you do it and this is one place where that could happen i've  early days of what to do with the site and right now would be hard to do it because of the topography of the site yeah if the top topography were to be changed during the capping process  that would be an option ok as we were running out of time is that the signal that i've yet do you have any idea what this project would cost before we were  or do you yes terms of the solar no i think that is rapidly changing you know it changes from one year to the next i think that would really depend on when this ultimately happens in terms of the bike park i can tell you think years of similar bike parts that have been built around the country in terms of what they would cost and i think in terms of you know and we can put that in terms of what has been spent for other playgrounds that have been recently rehabilitated in the community  so in terms of what something like this could cost you know generally there is a very active and involved volunteer community involved with the bike parks that have been built around the country they really have a very dedicated use base and so a bike park of similar size and nature built in two thousand and fifteen cost roughly half a million dollars but about two thirds of that was provided by volunteer and donation services so local construction companies helping out and so i think largely the costs can be offset by grants by potentially c p w funny and we think this is a c p a eligible yes well that's object looks like we may be seeing you at a future select meeting hopefully near future select meeting yeah how hopefully absolutely and who knows maybe this will be on town meeting warrant in the  you haven't seen the last of lucy and roger and you'll be hearing a lot more about this idea i think it's a great idea and i'm really glad that we got to tell our viewers about it you know  thank you for your time absolutely this is a great thank you for tuning in everyone this is belmont in thirty if you have ideas for future shows you can e mail me at belmont at work at local dot com