The nearly one million annual visitors and campers to Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville will soon be able to enjoy upgrades and renovations to the flagship state park as construction begins on several projects that amount to about $9 million from the NY Parks 2020 initiative.
On June 25 at the Green Lakes Golf Course, New York State Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey held a press conference announcing the projects, which include interior and exterior improvements to the golf clubhouse, renovations of restrooms within the park, the construction of comfort stations, the addition and upgrade of campsites at the Pine Woods camping area, turning the park into a wifi hotspot and upgrading the contact stations at the entrances of the park.
“We’re talking about the ‘Renaissance of parks,’” said Harvey. “We’re talking about the 20th century magnificent legacy that was left to us. We’re restoring it’s historic and environmental grandeur and under that umbrella, we’re talking about modernizing the system and making it more relevant for the 21st century.”
According to Harvey, these projects will be done to make the facilities at Green Lakes more energy and systematically efficient, with plans to have stormwater diverted away from the lake to improve water quality.
Upgrades to the campsites at Pine Woods include building larger campsites to accommodate RVs, and the addition of electric, water and sewer connections to campsites, said Harvey.
The upgrades to the entrance stations of the park will address traffic issues with an added automated entry lane providing visitors with the option to pay with a card, as well as replacing the ticket booth with a modern workspace for the entrance attendant and security.
“Parks are something that are a great asset to every community,” said Fayetteville Mayor Mark Olson at the announcement. “Everything that we do, we do towards to betterment of residents and their quality of life, but recently we’ve been talking about that quantity of that quality … We want things like these projects at Green Lakes to impact out residents positively.”
These projects are being made possible with funds from the NY Parks 2020 initiative, started by Governor Andrew Cuomo to revitalize and encourage attendance at state parks and historic sites throughout New York. Funding for this effort has been sourced from a broad range of private and public entities to invest about $900 million in parks from 2011 to 2020. This includes about $110 million from the 2015-16 state budget.
Verona Beach State Park also hosted Harvey on June 25 to celebrate the grand opening of its $4.2 million new beach facility.
Hayleigh Gowans is a reporter for the Eagle Bulletin. She can be reached at [email protected].
