Today’s weather promised to be mild, so after breakfast we packed up into the car and explored a new park in our neighborhood: Horseshoe Farm Park. Horseshoe Farm Park gets its name from the bend in the Neuse River which surrounds the park on three sides. We’d heard about it in the news lately but decided to see for ourselves what it was all about.
The park has been in the news because of controversy in determining what to do with it. The city is currently working through a master plan for the park, which is where the controversy lies.
Members of the Horseshoe Farm Park Master Plan Committee were tasked with coming up with the best use of the property. They were obstensibly supposed to do this with the public’s best interest at heart. Instead, they got a push in a developer-friendly direction when they were nudged to make it an “active” park: with ballfields, tennis and basketball courts, a dog park and a gynmasium. This put local activists in a snit, who then proceeded to push their vision of the park as a nature preserve . Throughout the planning process, public comment on the park has always strongly favored this natural approach.
Some have questioned why Raleigh first pitched this park as a nature preserve, then changed course and pitched an active park to the planning committee, only acquiescing when the public let its nature park preference be known. I think the answer came this week when Raleigh revealed the gift from Dr. Annie Louis Wilkerson, a wealthy obstetrician who left her 155 acres to the city with the stipulation that it remain a nature park. Most importantly to the Horseshoe Farm park saga, Dr. Wilkerson’s deal hinged on the City of Raleigh keeping it a strict secret. Members of the Parks and Rec advisory board weren’t even aware of the gift.
The city (or at least some in the city) has known about Dr. Wilkerson’s gift for almost a decade. The question they have to grapple with is this: does Raleigh need a 155-acre nature preserve less than five miles from a 140-acre nature preserve?
Not having been to Wilkerson park (because it’s not yet open), I can’t say what it has to offer. On the other hand, Horseshoe Farm with its rolling pasture area, open hay barn, wooded trails near the riverbank, and abundant wildlife, seems perfect just the way it is. Try as I might, I just could not picture gyms, tennis courts, or any other urban-oriented buildings going there. I love playing sports, but there are plenty of places for that stuff. Horseshoe Farm Park isn’t it.
The park’s planning committee meets again at 7 PM Wednesday night, March 1st at Durant Nature Park to continue hammering out the park’s future. Among the audience will be Kelly or me – two happy converts to the “nature park” cause.
Links:
City of Raleigh: Horseshoe Farm Park Planning Committee
Friends of Horseshoe Farm Park
Indy: Battle over Horseshoe Farm Park heats up
Indy Blog: A Big win at Horseshoe Farm Park
N&O: Tennis, gym, dog park nixed
N&O: Two park planning committee members resign, spur email war
Durant Nature Park: site of March 1st committee meeting
Welcome to my site! I appreciate you checking in. You may of course put links to my posts on your website (and thanks for asking).
The morning we visited the park we had it all to ourselves. It was almost magical! I know that won’t always be the case, but the quiet beauty really spoke to us. It certainly is a special place.
Thanks for keeping your fellow citizens aware of this important resource and the work being done to make it better.
Mark
Dear Mark and Kelly,
Thanks for your blogs about Horseshoe Farm Park! It’s good to know that people are going out to the park and experiencing it for themselves, and enjoying what a special
place it is.
Friends of Horseshoe Farm is working to make sure this spectacular land is turned into a simple and very unique and special park that honors and celebrates the Neuse River, the wildlife there — like the native wild turkey, the landscape, nature in general, cultural history and the arts.
There are strong forces within City Government that are also working hard to try to develop the park for high intensity active recreation purposes (gymnasium, lighted tennis courts complex, ball fields, and lighted dog park). While we appreciate the need for active recreation, we know that there is an abundance of other undeveloped park land in NE Raleigh that is more appropriate for active recreation. We hope Horseshoe Farm will be allowed to become a different, simpler kind of park, where people can go to have a high quality nature experience unlike anywhere else.
As you can probably tell from the newspaper articles, we will need all the help we can get to be successful in our efforts to preserve this beautiful place. We hope you will go to our website, http://www.horseshoefarm.org, and sign in so we can send you email updates and action alerts. As the park master plan moves forward, we will need citizens – especially from NE Raleigh – to come to the Parks Board and City Council to let them know you care about this park and what happens to it.
We would also appreciate the opportunity to create a link on our website to your two blog articles on the park. Of course, we wouldn’t do this without your permission, so let us know if we can do it.
Thanks again, and we hope you will continue to tell your friends and neighbors about Horseshoe Farm so they can enjoy it too!
Friends of Horseshoe Farm
P.S. The next Horseshoe Farm Master Planning Committee meeting is tentatively scheduled for March 22nd. At this meeting, the Draft Plan will likely be finalized. There will be an opportunity to comment on the Draft Plan when it is forwarded to the Parks Board, probably in April.