Veterans Park Funding Heads To Town Meeting

ORLEANS – The proposed renovation of Veterans Memorial Park has been several years in the planning. But significant headway could be made on the project if additional funding is approved for it at next month’s annual town meeting.

Included in this spring’s slate of Community Preservation Act projects is a request from the town’s Veterans and Memorial Day committee for $150,000 for new walkways at the park, located downtown at the intersection of Main Street and Route 28. The committee previously supported a $26,928 request for community preservation funding for a park design in May 2021.

More recently, $110,000 in town funding was approved through annual town meeting last May for infrastructure improvements to the park, including irrigation and lighting upgrades. But with approval of the $150,000 on May 13, park proponents say the project could be on course to break ground by the end of the year.

“The pathways are the most significant item in the park, whether it’s in dollars or in terms of the design element of the park,” said Brian Sosner, president of Veterans Memorial Park at Academy Place, Inc., the nonprofit working to raise funds for the renovation.

The park funding is one of 14 CPA requests bundled into Article 15 of the annual town meeting warrant. If the article is approved, Sosner said ground could be broken on the project in the fall.

“Now we’re talking about landscaping, gardens, benches, and completing the brick patios,” he said. “That’s much easier to talk about once you get through [annual town meeting].”

The goal of the renovation is to create a fully accessible park that not only will appropriately honor local veterans past and present, but that can be used more broadly by the community. Plans call for renovations to existing memorials and allocated space for future ones, as well as the installation of benches and brick patios with laser-engraved memorial bricks, which the nonprofit is selling to help finance the renovation.

“This park has not been upgraded in over 50 years,” Sosner said in an email.

In its original application to the CPC for this spring, the Veterans and Memorial Day committee asked for $200,750. That figure would have covered the additional cost of putting in foundations for four new memorials to commemorate the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars, as well as the Global War on Terrorism. But as a recreation request to the CPC, Town Counsel Michael Ford told the committee that only funding for the walkways was eligible.

Instead, Kevin Higgins, who chairs the Veterans and Memorial Day committee, said that footings for the future memorials will be set as part of the walkway work, and foundations will be poured when the money is raised for them.

“The plan is if we can do the walkway and get that recreational component of the CPC [funding] in place, we can get the walkway open and have people walking on it and everything,” he said. “And when the time comes and we have the donations, we can work on those additional monuments down the road.”

Sosner said several people have so far made commitments to donate to the park restoration. But approval of the $150,000 will hopefully entice more people to donate with more assurance that the project will advance as planned.

“What ends up happening is you have donors who are waiting to donate, who want to know that the project is really going to happen,” he said. “And then I know there are various corporations that want to get involved, various donors that want to get involved. But I think we’ve always said the town has to get over the hump of saying ‘Are we going to do this, and can we get initial funding?’”

The engraved bricks will make up the proposed patio areas and will also line the walkways, Sosner said. But he said other donors have also pledged financial commitments to other aspects of the renovation. One person has committed to funding a podium-style memorial commemorating the War of 1812, which plays an important role in the town’s history.

“There was a Battle of Orleans in the War of 1812 which is very important to our history, and it’s not represented in the park,” Sosner said. Higgins said the Veterans and Memorial Day committee would need to officially vote at some point to accept any donation for the proposed memorial.

And donations to the park aren’t relegated to monetary contributions, Sosner said. There’s also potential for people and businesses to contribute in-kind services to the renovation effort.

Sosner said park proponents may have some presence at annual town meeting to inform voters about the CPC request ahead of the vote. As to what will happen at the spring session, both he and Higgins were reluctant to make any predictions.

“You never know what’s going to happen at town meeting,” Sosner said.

With what’s expected to be the last piece of town funding needed for the project heading before voters, Higgins thought back to how efforts to renovate the park began. During a re-dedication of the park’s existing Vietnam memorial seven years ago, two local veterans whose names were being added to the memorial were left to watch the ceremony from outside the park due to a lack of accessibility.

“In a way, I’d like to think we carried on their legacy,” he said.

Email Ryan Bray at ryan@capecodchronicle.com