Marblehead board OKs park upgrades

MARBLEHEAD – Memorial Park, the triangular Pleasant and Essex street park that contains the town?s monuments to its war dead, is due for a facelift.The Recreation and Park Commission voted Wednesday evening to have landscape architect Matt Ulrich from Ulrich Bachand Landscape Architecture of Wenham create a master plan for as many as seven replacement trees, grass and other plants at the park.Ulrich is scheduled to visit the park Monday morning. The commissioners chose him because he is a native Marbleheader and offered to create the plan for $2,000, far less than his usual fee.The commission has asked him to turn his plan in by Labor Day so they can plant grass the first week of September and plant other vegetation in October.The park upgrade will be a significant part of a downtown transformation. The former YMCA building, which dominated the park block, will be replaced by a new structure housing condos, commercial space and a parking garage. The National Grand Bank is installing a bank parking lot at the opposite end of the property.Commission Chairman Chip Osborne referred to the creation as “a reborn park” and “a classic green New England park.”Commissioner Derek Norcross cautioned Ulrich that the park is “the most solemn and important place in Marblehead.”Neighbor Jayne Mace told him, “It will be awful nice to have that green again.”On behalf of other neighbors, she added, “Now that the ?Y? is gone those traffic lights shine through the whole neighborhood – and we?d like to have two pine trees so we can put lights on them in the winter.”Osborne mentioned that he would like to see new benches at the park and lighting that would illuminate them at night.The park upgrade came about in part because of the new parking lot, which abuts the 1/3-of-an-acre park. Commissioners said they would like to see the hedge stay on the parking lot line, to shelter the lot from the view of park visitors.