Deer Park to be Revitalized

may soon be getting a facelift if the Marin Municipal Water District wins a $500,000 grant from the River Parkways Grant Program.

The facelift would include repaving the parking area and entrance area with new permeable concrete, refurbishing the picnic tables, planting new oak trees, habitat restoration, improvements to the trail that goes by the school and a bridge to connect the trail to the Deer Park Fire Road, and a new gate and information kiosk at the trailhead.

See the full proposal at right.

“This project’s intended to make the place more useable. Make it safe and do some restoration,” said Mike Swezy, watershed manager, during a presentation of the plan at the Fairfax Town Council meeting on Nov. 2.

The project and improvements will in many ways resemble the recent renovations at the Leo T. Cronin fish viewing area out on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, said Swezy. That project also replaced the asphalt with permeable concrete, replaced plants with some native versions, created a new trail, installed a bridge, and put up an information kiosk. Much of the work was done by AmeriCorps and Conservation Corp North Bay volunteers.

Similarly, if the district is able to get the grant funding for the Deer Park restoration, they will also rely heavily on volunteer and intern labor. Though there is no set date MMWD expects to hear back from the California Natural Resources Agency about the River Parkways Grant, the district hopes to find out about funding by early next year and do most of the work in 2013.

The most expensive part of the revitalization will be installing the new, experimental permeable concrete, because most of the base in the parking lot has to be removed and rebuilt.

There will also be funding for a landscape architect, said Swezy, to address habitat restoration and landscaping. Design charettes will be held in Fairfax about the landscaping and proposal as the plan moves forward.

In fact, Swezy made the presentation at the Fairfax Town Council at the request of councilmember David Weinsoff, who pointed out the area is so heavily used by town residents that the town often “felt it owned it.”

Deer Park was originally a county park starting in 1968 until 2008 and was leased to create a regional park with plans for campgrounds, ballfields, and expanded parking lots. Clearly, those plans never came to fruition, but when MMWD took over the land and added it to the watershed the district made it clear it had plans to improve the area.

The picnic area at Deer Park, said Swezy, was originally constructed in the 1930s by the civilian conservation corp and the parking lot has been patched hundreds of times.

Most of the council and residents expressed initial support for the proposed revitalization, but council candidate Chris Lang pointed out that if the district was going to improve the trail, it would make sense for it to be a multi-use trail so that mountain bikes don’t travel as close to the school as they do right now.

Swezy said the district has policies that prohibit bikes on narrow trails, but the existing trail closer to the school allows bikes.

“We intend it to be a model of good watershed practices for land use,” said Swezy.

Do you use Deer Park? Do you think the revitalization is a good idea? What things would you like to see fixed?