Ideas Aired for Park On Powell Property And Nearby Acreage In North Haven

A concept plan has come into focus for a passive park at the Lovelady Powell property and an adjacent parcel of preserved open space, though “nothing has been decided, nothing has been bought, no money has been raised,” Trustee Chris Fiore reported to an audience of about 20 people at the May 17 monthly meeting of the North Haven Village Board.

“We don’t want to make it an amusement park,” nor offer active recreation facilities such as soccer or baseball fields, he said. Nor will the project depend on public funds. “I don’t want to use a dollar of tax money” to pay for it, Fiore said.

So far, the plan — which Fiore called a “placeholder,” subject to further suggestions from the public — calls for creating a stone-based walking path straight from Route 114 to Sunset Beach Road alongside the Powell property, along the line of a damaged colonnade of maples that will be cleaned up and restored.

“You don’t want to walk through there today,” Fiore noted — it’s overgrown and tick-infested — “but you will want to in six months.”

The park, as Fiore described it, might include a winding labyrinth for young and old to explore; a small wooden “performance platform” for readings and acoustic musical presentations; additional walking paths with benches and bridges over two ponds; a gazebo; a pollinator garden to attract bees, birds and butterflies, that would be fenced to protect it from deer; and an apothecary garden that would be tended by volunteers.

There will be no playground for children, but the walkways could lead to a few pieces of play equipment, such as a “wobble bridge” to climb on and swings hanging from trees.

Fiore said there will be no lighting, and no portable toilets or trash bins. “We’ll see if everyone will pack in and out,” he said, adding that it “would be criminal to put a porta-potty” on the property.

“This is the first public park North Haven will create and will be able to enjoy in 357 years,” Fiore proclaimed, “because that’s when we were settled.”

“We’re very proud of the thoughts that we’ve had,” he said. “We’d love to have your support on it, and we’d love to hear ideas that you may have that you’d like included, or things that you don’t want included. This is your meeting. It’s really to get you involved in this.”

Head of a four-person committee of North Haven residents tasked with developing a park plan and raising donations as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, Fiore reported that two major donors of in-kind services have signed on to help create the park.

Local resident Sam Panton of Terra Design, he said, is drafting the landscaping plan and will donate time, labor, materials and equipment to implement it; and Jackson Dodds & Company, Inc. will provide tree care services including new trees to restore the overgrown and badly damaged colonnade of silver maples that once provided access from Ferry Road to an early 20th-century mansion built on the bluffs overlooking Noyac Bay. It still stands there today.

Across Sunset Beach Road, the same right-of-way is now called Barclay Drive. The old estate property later became the Pallottine Fathers retreat and summer camp. It is now the gated West Banks private community.

Fiore said Jackson Dodds’s donation of materials and services could be worth close to “six figures” and that restoring the colonnade and creating the pathway through it was the first priority in implementing a park plan.

There were no suggestions for park elements, but a handful of listeners had questions, including Kate Laughton, who asked what process will be followed for settling on a final plan. Mayor Jeff Sander explained that Fiore’s committee, acting as a non-profit, will present a final plan to the Village Board and do the fundraising to implement it. Some $75,000 in the budget to begin work would be recovered through the fundraising effort. The final plan will be subject to a public hearing and board approval.

The mayor noted the Powell property was “right in the center” of North Haven and adjacent to other preserved parcels, including the 6-acre property to the east acquired by the Southampton Town Community Preservation Fund and managed by the village. The CPF also owns a parcel of about 15 acres to the south that is part of the former Cilli Farm. The mayor said eventually, as the park plan evolves, the park could extend into that property.

Sander began lobbying the CPF through Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, a North Haven resident, to acquire the 4.1-acre Lovelady Powell property and preserve it as open space after the former actress and model died at 89 in February 2020. When Fiore joined the board as a trustee, he took over the effort.

A sale between the CPF and Lovelady Powell’s heirs, at a price of “no more than $2.7 million,” according to the Town Board’s resolution approving it, took place on December 13, 2021.

The clock started then on the village’s promise to remove the structures on the property within a year, as demanded by the CPF. Fiore noted that the 1840s farmhouse has “quite a music history” because it was owned by John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful in the late 1960s. He invited musicians to use it as a retreat, including the group Crosby, Stills and Nash, who prepared for their first album there, Fiore said. So far, no plan has surfaced for moving it or saving it in some way.

The lawn on the Powell grounds will require little maintenance, landscaper Sam Panton said at the meeting, because it has never been irrigated, fertilized or treated with pesticides, prompting a root system that must go 18 inches deep, he said.

One of his committee members, artist Stephanie Joyce, created a logo for the park with the phrase “Believe In Magic,” a line from the Lovin’ Spoonful hit, “Do You Believe in Magic.” The other two members are Max Rohn, the general manager and CEO of Wölffer Vineyard, and writer-editor Stella Sands.