NOVEMBER 24, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2015, 11:45 AM
BY MARK KRULISH
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
(This article is the second of an ongoing series examining the Schedler property and the issues surrounding it.)
In the springtime, a common sound heard around the village’s parks is the distinct metallic “ping” of an aluminum bat making solid contact with a baseball.
With a robust baseball program, Ridgewood is home to many ball fields at its numerous parks scattered all around town, but the need for one specific size field has become entangled with one of the village’s most sensitive issues.
The Ridgewood News has already explored the concerns held by residents in the neighborhood that plays home to the historic Zabriskie-Schedler house and property, where a full-size 90-foot baseball field has been proposed.
However, it may be the last place remaining to install such a field, driving the Ridgewood Baseball Softball Association (RBSA) to donate money to the village as part of a matching grant opportunity from Bergen County that would allow the proposed Phase One portion of the project, which consists of a cleanup in the woodlands on West Saddle River Road, to begin.
While there has always been a need for more fields in Ridgewood, the completion of the state-of-the-art track and field complex at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in 2011 put a tremendous strain on the resources available to the RBSA, said President Jim Albano.
Previously, that field was home to one of the village’s two “60-90” fields – a diamond consisting of 90-foot basepaths and a pitcher’s mound that sits 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. BF was also home to a smaller, multi-purpose field with a dirt infield.
