Brick Life

Redesigned Brick Park to Reopen Oct. 5, Officials Announce

by
Daniel Nee
September 29, 2020

Bayside Park, Brick, N.J., Sept. 28, 2020. (Photo: Daniel Nee)

Brick Township’s Bayside Park, closed since January, will reopen with its new design and state-of-the-art amenities in October, township officials announced Monday. Mayor John Ducey and members of the township council will host ceremonial ribbon-cutting event Oct. 5.

“This ribbon cutting has been a long time in the making and we cannot be more thrilled with how the renovation of Bayside Park turned out,” said Mayor Ducey. “The park is filled with great amenities and will offer residents and guests to Brick Township a place to spend sun-filled days fishing, crabbing or a number of other activities in one of the most beautiful locations on the Barnegat Bay.”

Bayside Park, Brick, N.J., Sept. 28, 2020. (Photo: Daniel Nee)

The park was closed last winter and a grand reopening was planned for Memorial Day weekend, but the coronavirus pandemic got in the way. Though later than first planned, the park, which fronts Barnegat Bay on Route 35 across from Brick Beach III, is ready to open with a great many new features.

The improved park includes a new gazebo, an enlarged and improved playground with safety surface, a new picnic area, new benches and shade structures on the boardwalk, bait tables for people to fish and crab, a concrete patio for activities and two concrete cornhole games. A new boardwalk was previously installed on the site. The project also included landscaping and installation of sod and an irrigation system.

Bayside Park suffered extensive damage during Super Storm Sandy in 2012. In the subsequent years, the park was used as a staging area for recovery projects such as the dredging of Barnegat Bay and the beach replenishment project. The Township waited for those projects to be finalized before moving forward with the renovation design and construction.

The cost of the renovation project was $722,022. The winning bid was submitted by Precise Construction of Freehold, NJ. Precise previously completed the Herbertsville, Angela Hibbard, Hank Waltonowski and Bernie Cooke projects. CME Associates designed the park and served as the consulting engineers for the project. The township has applied for state Green Acres funding to offset the cost of Bayside and other park improvement projects.

Bayside Park, Brick, N.J., Sept. 28, 2020. (Photo: Daniel Nee)

This is the seventh project completed as part of Ducey’s Park Improvement Program. Previous projects include the playgrounds at Windward Beach Park, Herbertsville Park (formerly Colorado Park), Lake Riviera Park, Angela Hibbard Park, Hank Waltonowski Park and Bernie Cooke Park. Other recreational facility improvements completed in the past few years include the installation of fitness stations and replacing the field turf at the Drum Point Sports Complex.

The next planned park improvement project will take place at Cedar Bridge Manor Park.

The ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled for 3 p.m. Monday, Oct. 5. The rain date is Wednesday, Oct. 7 at 3 p.m. The public is invited to attend.