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June 15, 2025

Chestertown Spy

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8 Letters to Editor

Open Letter to Town Council: New Playground Location at Wilmer Wrong Place

April 5, 2022 by Letter to Editor

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I invite you to stop by Wilmer Park before the meeting tonight to see the location of the playground in Wilmer Park. It has been moved from the original and approved location to now be in the middle of the park I gather to avoid cutting down tree(s).

Placing the playground in the middle of the park essentially makes the oval of the park not usable for the usual activities enjoyed by the community. Perhaps if a tree needs to be removed it could be replaced rather than jeopardizing the usability of the park.

In may not be too late to make this change as of noon day today only the dirt has been taken up.

Thank you for your consideration.

Charles Lerner
Chestertown

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: 8 Letters to Editor

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Letters to Editor

  1. Bill Arrowood says

    April 5, 2022 at 3:43 PM

    You’re not wrong.. the Wilmer location was a concession and the better location would have been to invest in relocating the town maintenance shop, but no one was able to look that far forward.

  2. Mike Bitting says

    April 5, 2022 at 6:18 PM

    Just another case of civic engagement after the fact and nimbyism that runs rampant here. People need to realize that the town isn’t a museum and that actual families with young kids live here. The playground can’t come soon enough.

    • Tess Jones says

      April 6, 2022 at 6:32 AM

      As a mother with young children, I couldn’t agree more. Chestertown is more than a retirement home. I grew up with an incredible playground in Chestertown, and I’m looking forward to more options (any options) for my kiddos. Invest in young families! We are the future of this town. 💚

  3. Maria Wood says

    April 6, 2022 at 4:47 PM

    Wilmer Park is large. The proposed playground is modest in size and scope. It’s hard to imagine what the “usual activities” are that people currently enjoy in the park and will be made impossible by the addition of a safe place for children to play.

    • Holly Geddes says

      May 11, 2022 at 4:37 PM

      The problem is not to forfeit a safe place for children to play. The problem is that it should be at the top of the park where kids can safely play in the shade of the trees. If there is another site, the should be considered. But, among other things, there are art fairs, cardboard boat races, music events and watching the fireworks that take up the center of the park. Why mess that up?

    • Holly Geddes says

      May 11, 2022 at 4:38 PM

      The problem is not to forfeit a safe place for children to play. The problem is that it should be at the top of the park where kids can safely play in the shade of the trees. If there is another site, that should be considered. But, among other things, there are art fairs, cardboard boat races, music events and watching the fireworks that take up the center of the park. Why mess that up?

  4. M. Fallaw says

    April 6, 2022 at 4:59 PM

    I sure hope the former location of Janes United Methodist Church’s previous cemetery has been ascertained (to the extent it can be) and determined whether the grave markers only or the markers plus burial remains (theoretically 6 ft. under?) were moved to the new/current cemetery (in the 1940s? 1930s?) farther out on Quaker Neck Rd. The first cemetery, on QN Rd., now called Queen St. or Cross St. in that area, I think, was across the road from an early Janes/Zion Methodist Episcopal Church, with black congregant members. Church building/s and cemetery can be seen on one or more of the old Sanborn insurance maps for Chestertown on the Library of Congress website. For a long time, the surrounding area was not within the town limits. The maps show that, in general, it was an industrial/commercial area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I would hope the Historic District Commission (and Planning Commission, for that matter) knows about these maps and uses them as a resource when appropriate. (A couple more will soon be out of copyright and available online at the LOC website.) Some paper copies (much easier to use than the online versions) probably are still held locally.

    Though I couldn’t tell for sure, the cemetery appears to have been in the upper Wilmer Park area. The church site (about where Stepney Village is now, between the rail tracks and a Stepney Farm boundary, near a tree row) was originally acquired for Chestertown’s white Methodist Episcopal Church, which apparently initially reused an old, 18th-century distillery building. After what’s now called the Nearly New Building at the upper end of Fountain Park was built shortly after the turn of the 19th century by that Methodist congregation, at some point the black ME congregation acquired the former property, where they successively used at least two buildings as a church, one perhaps the old distillery building or perhaps another frame smaller building, which apparently became a parsonage and/or Sunday School building, perhaps moved slightly, when a bigger and better frame church building was built soon after the Civil War (but burned before the big C’town fire of 1910). The new, current brick Janes Church was built at the corner of Cross & Cannon after the C’town fire.

  5. Karen Smith says

    April 6, 2022 at 11:55 PM

    Apparently, the Town Council has forgotten, or ignored, the fact the the land, now Wilmer Park, was provided to the town as a park with the proviso that it would NOT turn into a playground with equipment!

    • Deirdre LaMotte says

      April 7, 2022 at 2:53 PM

      Worton Park was left to be used exclusively for equestrian use. We’ll, that did not last.
      I’m glad little ones will have a playground
      in Wilmer. How can that affect people’s use?

    • Mike Bitting says

      April 9, 2022 at 6:51 AM

      Ok Boomer

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