You wouldn’t know it from looking at it, but that soccer field along Harlem Avenue just south of Robinson Court in Riverside isn’t a park. Although the field appears to be simply part of Harrington Park, it’s actually village owned land that is zoned for residential use. It was never officially designated as Riverside park land.
But not for long.
On Oct. 15, the Riverside village board is expected to finally attach the green parcel of land to the Harrington Park, thus officially designating the entire parcel as a unified, indivisible park.
On Oct. 1, village trustees discussed the matter in a Committee of the Whole session, with six board members-Ben Sells, Jean Sussman, Kevin Smith, Candice Grace, John Scully and Village President Harold J. Wiaduck Jr.-throwing their support toward designating the parcel as park land. Just one member of the board, Thomas Shields, feels the land should remain free from the park designation.
The vote on Oct. 15 will signal a clear shift in policy from past boards, which refused to designate the land as a park. Previously village trustees sought to keep the land’s R-1 zoning designation, which would allow for the parcel that runs along Harlem Avenue to be developed for a public use, such as a firehouse or water works structure.
However, two members of the Frederick Law Olmsted Society, Holly Machina and Cindy Kellogg, started a petition drive last May to designate the entire area as a park to keep it free from any future development. They amassed roughly 250 signatures and made their pitch to a suddenly sympathetic village board, which clearly articulated its support for the park designation.
“I never saw any reason not to do it,” said Trustee Ben Sells, who argued strongly on Machina’s and Kellogg’s behalf. “The most compelling reason was the need for a public facility to be built there at some point. But once we realized that there are other places we can turn to, it took that last reason away.”
Trustee Thomas Shields remained steadfast in his view that changing the designation was not a good idea. While he said he was fine with the land being used as a park, “it wasn’t acquired with that intent.” The intent, he said was the keep it for a possible village facility.
That view of history, however, is disputed by one of the former property owners who sold one 50-by-150-foot lot to the village back in the late 1960s.
The village acquired the property along Harlem Avenue around 1968, when it purchased several lots from private owners. According to one of those former owners, Nicholas Cariello, he was told at the time that the village wanted the land for park purposes.
“I was promised it would be park land,” said Cariello, who added that if that promise hadn’t been made, he wouldn’t have sold the land to the village.
Cariello also added that the lot depths along the 300-foot Harlem Avenue frontage between Robinson Court and Robinson Road are not uniform. The lots in the center of the block are deeper, he said.
For her part, Machina said she was “thrilled” that the land may soon be designated as a park, adding “I’m surprised it went so smoothly. I didn’t think it would happen our first time around. I thought it would be a longer process.”
If the board votes to designate the eastern portion of Harrington Park as park land, it would mark the first time the village has so named public land as a park since October 2003. At that time the board voted to name an area of public land between the downtown train station and the commuter parking lot a park. But the board, at the same time, decided against designating the Harrington Park land as a park.