Parkland Dedication

Island Coastal Ventures intends to dedicate 11.1 ha (27.4 acres) of forest, wetlands and high quality landscape as park. This constitutes 36% of the Longlands parent land parcel. The generous land dedication will preserve and protect the site’s existing welcoming, public feel and its sensitive ecological features in perpetuity, and is considered a “win-win” for the community and for the Longlands development. The community stands to gain a significant public amenity, including the preservation of access to and through the Longlands property, creation of new public interpretative facilities and trails, future protection of wildlife habitat values, and preservation of one of the largest remaining, contiguous forest blocks within the entire Brooklyn Creek Watershed. At the same time, the Longlands development stands to benefit from being enveloped in forest land, since new buildings that would otherwise back onto adjacent land uses will instead back onto parkland. Also, by facilitating public access to these areas, Longlands will remain intimately linked both physically and psychologically with the surrounding community, and will maintain the inclusive atmosphere that makes the site so precious to the surrounding community.

The park will preserve near 70% of Longlands’ existing forest resource, and all of the site’s existing ephemeral wetland complexes in its northern and southwest sectors. The preservation of these densely forested areas will protect migration routes and habitat for a wide variety of animals, and help to maintain, in as much as this site can, healthy watershed function. Newly created forest edges will be shaped and pruned under the supervision of a professional arborist to guard against blow down.