Eyes On Iron Point Park, A 'Wasted Treasure' In Flanders

The route through the working-class neighborhood passes modest houses, some small enough to fit comfortably into the living rooms of the multimillion-dollar mansions on the southern and eastern sides of Southampton Town. At the terminus of Wood Road Trail in Flanders is Iron Point Park, a lush, predominantly wooded over 100-acre site with a peninsula that offers scenic frontage on the Peconic River and Reeves Bay. The town park accommodates a baseball field with lights and scoreboard, and a new-looking playground for young children.

On a sunny spring Saturday afternoon, Iron Point Park is completely deserted. Why?

Access to what Vince Taldone, the president of the Flanders, Riverside, and Northampton Community Association, calls “a wasted treasure” is a challenge.

From Priscilla Avenue to the park entrance, Wood Road Trail is a nearly impassable dirt obstacle course of potholes and craters. The interior to the park, the path from the entrance gate to the ball field parking lot is only a little better. When it rains, Mr. Taldone said, the path is an impenetrable mess of mud and puddles like small ponds.

The good news is, the road is not going to stay that way.

Mr. Taldone and FRNCA applied for federal Community Development Block Grant monies for repairs to the first section of Wood Road Trail. Over the course of two years, he said, they petitioned for the $83,000 it will cost to pave, and they expect to receive the money and get the work underway this year.

Noting Iron Point Park may be receiving attention “from the outside in,” Mr. Taldone hoped money from the Community Preservation Fund could be used to improve the access from the park’s gate to the ball field. Unfortunately, CPF money can’t be used for capital improvements, New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., an author of CPF law, said. Another funding source may have to be found to improve the second half of the park access.

That at least part of the way in to Iron Point Park will be improved was the good news.

The less good news is that the park, once a bustling springtime venue of Little League games and spectators cheering and eating hot dogs, has been underutilized for the last several years. In 2018, Riverhead Little League considered using the park after its Flanders counterpart, which called Iron Point Park home, was folded into the bigger league. That it had lights to allow for night games was considered a major asset.

This year, according to Southampton Town Parks Director Kristen Doulos, East End Little League has asked to use the park for some of its games. Little League games are the main use of the park, she said. Ms. Doulos just recently hired a new recreation director for the department and said they’d spoke of the park and want to reach out to the community to see what ideas they might have to enhance its use. Mr. Taldone said his organization could help with outreach and surveys.

It won’t be the first time the community was involved in the life of Iron Point Park. Ray Normoyle, a member of the committee formed to consider the development of the park at the turn of the century, said that for some 30 years the property owners allowed Flanders Little League to make a ball field at the site. Volunteers maintained it for all those years, he said, “So the fences were dilapidated and there was cactus in the outfield.” When the town acquired the acreage in 2001, “we petitioned the town to rebuild that park,” he added. “They rebuilt that field, and it was beautiful.”

The Flanders community committee met with engineers hired by the town and together, Mr. Normoyle said, “We came up with a plan for the property, with hiking trails and boat and kayak launches and tennis courts. It was all approved and the money was allotted.”

“Then,” he said, “as politics go, a new group got to be in charge and that money got allocated to another part of town and we never got it.” The political direction of Southampton shifted in 2009.

But community members still had interest in the site.

In 2013, community members gathered to install a playground at Iron Point Park after the town’s youth bureau and FRNCA won a construction grant. Volunteers from Southampton’s Project Venture youth group, Flanders Northampton Ambulance, Flanders Little League, and FRNCA, pieced the playground together. The project’s total price tag was $34,000, including a $5,000 grant from the town, $2,000 from Panera Bread, and donations from an array of area businesses and organizations.

Years later, however, on a sunny spring Saturday, the playground, like the ball field, was pristine and deserted. Ms. Doulos acknowledged the neighborhood and the park are challenged by a reputation for criminal activity due to its seemingly remote locale. Remnants of criminal activity, such as drug paraphernalia, have been found at the heavily wooded site. What looked like a bent bed frame was visible through the trees near the entrance to the park.

Still, Ms. Doulos spoke of walking man-made trails that surround the ball field and playground and stretch all the way to the Iron Point peninsula. “It’s gorgeous back there,” she said. Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman echoed the director’s praise for the point’s scenic beauty. However, he noted there’s no direct water access at the site. A gate was erected in one area at the head of a trail because people kept driving into the woods, Ms. Doulos explained.

“We’re getting back on our feet,” the Parks Department director said, speaking of last year’s hectic summer of shutdown that had the department busy with continually changing beach regulations. She said that while even guidance related to beach openings is still forthcoming, as more recreational outdoor opportunities open up, the town hopes to see things happening at all its parks.

“Iron Point Park is certainly on our radar screen,” Ms. Doulos said.

Mr. Taldone wondered if it may not be time to pivot focus away from baseball and create venues for other sports that seem to be outpacing America’s favorite pastime in popularity in the neighborhood. He thought basketball hoops or transitioning the field for soccer matches might draw more people to the site. Ms. Doulos said she also thinks a soccer field might get more use, though a reconfiguration of the existing field would not result in a regulation-size soccer venue.

East End Little League President Bill Dawson had another theory to explain the locale’s under utilization: ticks. The site is “infested” with ticks, he said, recalling a time when even spectators watching a game from the steel bleachers were “coated” in them.

East End Little League has 29 teams and 318 players this year, serving kids from East Quogue, Quogue, Westhampton Beach, Remsenburg and Speonk, Mr. Dawson said. Hampton West Park on Stewart Avenue in Westhampton Beach is EELL’s home field.

In addition to the ticks, Mr. Dawson points out that Iron Point’s remote location at the end of an unpaved road is less accessible to players from Remsenburg and Speonk. Still, Mr. Dawson does plan on scheduling some games at Iron Point when the season begins next week. In the meantime, he hopes the town will spray for ticks.

It won’t.

Ms. Doulos said that, unfortunately, it would be cost prohibitive for the town to spray its myriad parks, trails and recreation areas. Ticks are bad all over, she said, adding this was the first she’d heard of them as a reason for Iron Point Park’s underuse.

The Iron Point field is part of a 144-acre property on Reeves Bay that the town purchased from the Goodale family in 2001 for $3.4 million. The town initially planned an extensive park at Iron Point, but that plan has yet to come to fruition. The property had been planned for development as a 44-lot residential subdivision when the town purchased it.

According to Flanders history expert and former historical society President Gary Cobb, bog iron deposits were found in the river and creeks all throughout the area. Legend has it a schooner carrying a load of iron ran aground in the shallow waters. Mr. Cobb said he was never able to confirm the shipwreck was the nexus of the Iron Point name, but noted one can definitely see the orange tint of iron in the sand from the sky above the peninsula.