This Land, Your Land

The state Division of Parks and Recreation has released sketches of plans for Haw River State Park and extended the public comment period until December 18, a Division news release says. A public meeting outlining the overall concepts of the proposed plan was held October 20.

Haw River, at Brown's Summit north of Greensboro, encompasses 1,334 acres, including the 200-acre campus of The Summit, an environmental education, conference and training center with multiple conference rooms, a dining hall with buffet service for 200 people, cottages and cabins, an outdoor pool, a gymnasium and more.

"Haw River's plan will explore ways that recently acquired land can complement the existing Summit Environmental Education Center and further its mission," the Division says. "Yet, it's important that the new state park have its own identity and traditional recreation opportunities."

The overall sketch shows a visitor center with an adjacent half-mile accessible loop trail, a day use area with two picnic shelters and an open playfield, an accessible boardwalk loop over a wetlands area, a group camping area and a hiking-trail system, and separate trailhead access to a potential segment of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

The plan for the Summit area suggests renovating the gym to become a 15,000-square-foot environmental education center, adding to the existing youth cabins, an interim day use area, an observatory, an environmental education maze and additional hiking trails.

A state park's master plan is essentially a blueprint for long-term development of facilities and recreation opportunities and a guide for protection of natural resources. Swanson and Associates P.A., a Carrboro-based landscape architecture firm, is developing the plan for Haw River.

Comments can be made to dpr.masterplancomments@ncdenr.gov or mailed to: Haw River State Park Master Planning, N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation, 1615 MSC, Raleigh, NC, 27699.