May 2, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 3 Wyckoff Township signs contract to purchase Russell Farms by John Koster The Wyckoff Township Committee concluded the contract to purchase the five-acre Russell Farms site on April 20, completing negotiations that had been in progress since 2009. Plans call for the former orchard into a landscaped, passive park for the entire community. “It’s a delight to me and will be a delight to the people of Wyckoff,” Mayor Christopher De Phillips said of the purchase. “Once the site is landscaped and trails and gardens are put it, we anticipate residents coming to the park for a picnic and for a place to throw a Frisbee.” Mayor De Phillips projected no timetable for development, but was pleased that the purchase had finally been contracted and that Russell Farms now belongs to Wyckoff. The price of the five-acre tract on Sicomac Avenue and Russell Avenue was $3.1 million. The land purchase, including the clean bill of environmental health from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, was covered with $1,859,000 from the Bergen County Open Space grant Wyckoff obtained from Bergen County, $1,204,000 from the municipal Open Space Tax authorized by Wyckoff voters in 2007, and $37,000 from the township’s capital improvement fund, part of the municipal budget adopted a few days before. The owners who sold Russell Farms to Wyckoff, Cole & Burke Realty Investments and Barrister Land Development Company, had originally intended the site for condominiums and later for single-family houses, but the pesticide pollution left over from the days when the tract was a working farm forestalled construction. The real estate market then slumped due to the general economic situation. The Township of Wyckoff moved to purchase the tract, but would not consummate the deal until the pesticide contamination had been handled. Wyckoff contacted Boswell Engineering to review the site and two underground fuel storage tanks were removed, effective April 19. A “no further action” letter regarding the contamination by pesticides was issued by the NJDEP on April 3. Wyckoff officials, including Mayor De Phillips and Township Committeemen Rudy Boonstra and Kevin Rooney, were all elated that the deal had finally been approved. They had wanted to close the purchase as quickly as possible, but refrained from signing until any possibility of environmental repercussions had been eliminated. The mayor and township committee noted that the five-acre Russell Farms tract brings Wyckoff’s inventory of open space to 289 acres, or 6.74 percent of the township’s total land area. Other local parks include the five-acre Larkin House property and home, the 13-acre Gardens of Wyckoff property, and the 18-acre Wyckoff Community Park.