Ridgewood July 14, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • Page 9 Habernickel project to spare rental houses for now by John Koster Ridgewood Village Engineer Christopher Rutishauser recently told the Ridgewood Council about a plan that would spare both rental houses on the Habernickel Horse Farm for the time being while demolishing some ancillary structures and locating a 33-space parking lot on the 10-acre site on Hillcrest Avenue. The demolition of the house at 1037 Hillcrest Avenue, ostensibly part of a tentative previous plan, is not part of the plan Rutishauser showed the council last week. Engineer’s rendering of dam restoration and site improvements to Habernickel Park. “It’s not intended to be done right now, it can be done later at the council’s choosing,” Rutishauser said. The plans, which will be bid shortly and probably implemented in the autumn, call for an eight-foot sidewalk separating the “active” portion of the park, the pastureland near Hillcrest Avenue, from the “passive” portion, the wooded slope, which will be left in a reasonably natural state except for foot paths, some of which will be ADAaccessible. The parking lot will also contain two ADA-accessible parking spaces, one more than required by federal regulations. Two overlapping sports fields are still planned for the flat pastureland, as agreed at meetings between sports advocates and neighbors of the park several years ago. The sports advocates wanted as many as five fields, while neighbors of the property wanted minimal development. Rutishauser said the plans call for no on-street parking on Hillcrest Avenue, and no light stanchions or night lighting of the sports fields. No precise price for the park development was known because the project has yet to be bid, but Rutishauser said he believed that the work in the plan could be accomplished with funds on hand: a mixture of outside grant money and taxpayer funds bonded to purchase the site from the owner, who had used the land as a horse farm.