Oak Ridge Park Opens to Public

For years Oak Ridge Park in Clark served as a county-run golf course, attracting golfers from around the area for a chance to hit some balls around. With public golf courses opening at Hyatt Hills and continuing to thrive in Scotch Plains, the county chose earlier this year to transform the park into a passive recreational area.

Mike Brennan, the county's director of park maintenance, said there have been four key areas the county started work on in order to make the park ready for passive recreation. The first was connecting the various paths in the park together to create a better walking, biking and jogging experience. The park features a two-and-a-half mile loop on the outer perimeter along with new pathways connecting the center of the park.

The county also transformed a former storage building into new restrooms and is working to restore a historic home on the property. Next to the parking lot stands the 18th century home of the original owners of the land, which has fallen into a state of disrepair. Brennan said the county is working to restore the building, starting with the outside. The county is repainting the house right now, having used old paint chips and federal paint specialists to match the original shade of yellow. Following the outside work, Brennan said, historic preservationists will go inside the house to restore it.

The house is not the only historic item in the park. Dotted around the park are several pumping station water fountains, which draw from underground wells. To use the fountain, a runner first has to pump the water up and then sip.

Brennan noted the county has recently opened an archery range on the site, which is believed to be only the third in New Jersey. The county's research showed only two others in the state, one in Sussex County and one in South Jersey. Brennan said the county wanted to create an archery experience for those in the central part of the state. He said the county already has seen several groups of disabled children using the archery range on a regular basis.

Brennan said the expansive open spaces of the park will be used for larger-scale activities in the future, including moving MusicFest from Nomahegan Park in Cranford to Oak Ridge this September. He said this was done because the new park will allow for a better crowd experience than the open spaces in Cranford, where crowds compete with a pond for space.