BRADLEY BEACH — The Bradley Beach Borough Council met on April 1 and workshopped two upcoming improvement projects slated to take place at the borough’s recreation center and at Sylvan Lake.
Borough Engineer Ben Matlack of CME Associates presented renderings for each of the projects, providing a glimpse into what might become a result of several grants recently received by the borough.
The Recreation Center, located at 39 ½ Main St. is a subject of an upcoming improvement project after the borough secured two separate grants totaling over $300,000. The two grants awarded to the borough are the local recreation improvement grant from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs for $74,000 and the Monmouth County municipal park improvement grant is $265,000, with a matching requirement from the borough.
Matlack presented an aerial rendering sketch of some of the key factors of the project. The scope of the project would include the removal of current pavement, resurfacing, coloring and re-striping of the center’s basketball and tennis courts, with pickleball striping layered on the tennis courts. Several residents raised concerns with the idea of layering pickleball striping over tennis courts, citing difficulties in determining which lines are assigned to which game.
Resident Mia Molin said, “Pickleball people will play on tennis courts because they’re used to it but tennis people don’t like to play on pickleball courts.”
In response, Matlack said the striping of the courts are up to the council’s preference, and the project could either feature only tennis courts, only pickleball courts or the fusion of both.
In addition to the improvements to the sport courts, the project is slated to feature a new playground structure catered to children between the ages of 5 and 12, other individual equipment for children between the ages of 2 and 5 and swing sets. Matlack said the estimated range of the total cost of the new playground is $200,000. The park area, which will be placed where the existing playground lies, will also feature a green space that will be occupied with picnic tables and benches.
After meeting with Recreation Director Courtney Pappas, Matlack said that the project is slated to begin construction in September in order to not interfere with the recreation department’s busy summer schedule.
Looking towards the South end of Bradley Beach, Matlack then unveiled a series of preliminary renderings and project updates for Sylvan Lake. Last April, Bradley Beach received a $2.4 million grant from the New Jersey Department of Transportation (DOT) for the rehabilitation of the failing wooden bulkhead in Sylvan Lake.
Currently, Sylvan Lake is subject of a variety of improvement projects and has been the center of focus for what Mayor Al Gubitosi referred to as “an all-star team” of engineers and citizens from both Avon-by-the-Sea and Bradley Beach.
With an overall plan to eventually dredge the lake, Matlack said, “The project I’m working on is ultimately one component of Sylvan Lake. Ultimately the main goal is to consider the health of Sylvan Lake, the safety of the lake and to make sure that any improvements we do keep those things in mind.”
Matlack, who recently attended a meeting of the Sylvan Lake Commission, presented three concept plans for the bulkhead improvement project. The first concept focused on solely replacing the bulkhead and leaving a dedicated space for a living shoreline and grasses. The second concept featured no bulkhead at all and would narrow Bradley Boulevard by 10 feet and feature a natural shoreline, which would not allow for vehicular and bicycle traffic at the same time and cut off access to the lake.
The third and final concept, which Matlack said was the Sylvan Lake Commission’s favorite option, is a hybrid between the first two concepts. The concept would reduce Bradley Boulevard from 50-feet to 44-feet wide, leaving room for vehicular and bicycle traffic as well as parking, and feature a 12-foot-wide grass-filled area followed by a retaining modular block bulkhead, which would leave space for a living shoreline area to the waters edge. This concept would leave a large area at the base of the wall, which would leave space for dredge material and reduce the impact of the surface area of the lake, Matlack said.
The preliminary concepts were workshopped and will include several public discussions prior to any improvements to be agreed upon, Mayor Gubitosi added.
“The thing that’s really important here is to understand how critical what we do around the lake affects the health of the lake,” Councilman Paul Nowicki said, who serves as the liaison to the Sylvan Lake Commission.
Nowicki added that these are first steps in the larger rehabilitation concepts aimed at improving Sylvan Lake, with the ultimate hope of setting up a public information center and town hall to keep residents informed throughout the planning process.
“Just so the public understands how dire the situation is at Sylvan Lake… There was a swan out in the middle of the lake standing up. It looks really pretty and we still have wildlife, but this lake is in dire need of resuscitation,” Mayor Gubitosi said.
According to Nowicki, the lake has at some points up to seven feet of silt piled up, posing major threats to wildlife and the health of the lake. Nowicki revealed the water flowing into the lake on the Bradley Beach side has no treatment process, something the upcoming improvement projects will aim to combat.
“There’s a lot of different measures that are being looked at by the engineering team on this project as well as other projects around the lake: how can we improve the water quality and quantity that goes into the lake and be able to manage a more healthy lake so that we can have that resource for the future,” Nowicki said.
In addition to the replacement of the bulkhead, Nowicki revealed that among other projects the Department of Environmental Protection is presently planning on replacing the failed outfall pipe leading to the ocean.
Due to environmental constraints, Nowicki said, there is a five-month window between November and March by which the outfall project must be completed, calling it a “critical time schedule.”
The Sylvan Lake Commission meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m. in the Bradley Beach Borough Hall, located at 701 Main St., at which the volunteer group discusses the lake and its upcoming improvement projects.
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