Still waiting for a good thing

Sometime this month the Village of Millerton will meet with regulators to learn more about what is needed to proceed with construction of the pool at Eddie Collins Memorial Park. As we reported last week, the Dutchess County Board of Health and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation are reviewing the project regarding septic placement and wetland buffers.

It has been a long time coming, but worth the wait, and the Village has the money! That’s a big accomplishment, and the lion’s share of the credit goes to the Millerton Community Park Committee chaired by Stephen Waite. As Mayor Jenn Najdek said last week, the project is now “99% funded,” with $7.56 million secured from three separate New York State grants.

Located on North Elm Avenue in the Village, Eddie Collins Memorial Park was originally used as a turntable for trains, a ball field and a horse racing track. In 1916, the village was left a sum of $15,000 by William G. Denney for “the benefit of the young people,” and by 1963, a committee was formed to name the ball field after former resident and Major League Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Eddie Collins.

Since then, the park has seen several additions, including the now defunct Denney Pool.Mayor Najdek has a lifelong connection to the park — swimming and lifeguarding at the pool and running the camp as a teenage counselor.

Waite also has fond memories of Denney Pool. “I spent a lot of time at the old Denney Pool as a kid and made many friends there, some I still keep in contact with,” he said in an interview last year.

Even today, The Millerton News invokes memories of Denney Pool in its ‘From the Archives’ column that appears on this page every week. Written by Kathleen Spahn and Rhiannon Leo-Jameson of the NorthEast-Millerton Library and reprinting news from the past, the column frequently mentions stubborn cracks in Denney Pool or news about lifeguard lessons. Announcements back then of night swims for the community also suggest an inviting recreational activity during these hot summer days.

Built in 1966, the Village closed the pool in 2015 — due to those cracks and structural problems.

In 2019, as members of the Eddie Collins Memorial Park Revitalization Committee, Waite and Jeanne Vanecko presented tentative plans for the park’s re-imagining to the Village Board. They explained the committee ultimately decided to complete the project in four phases. Waite and Co-Chair Vanecko have volunteered their time, energy and talents to help renovate the aging Eddie Collins Park into a recreational resource for the 21st Century.

The bequest more than 100 years ago by William G. Denney now has been succeeded by state grant money and significant funding raised by a steering committee and the entire revitalization committee.

As a community we owe much to these selfless volunteers for making it possible not only for Millerton to have a pool, but a first-class park for all of us to enjoy.

So let’s do the meetings, however long it takes.