A Park Sprawls In West Goshen

This appeared February 19, 2006

Just a few hundred feet south of the corner of Green Hill Road and Pottstown Pike in West Goshen, you can see the future.
There's even a sign telling you: "Future West Goshen Township Park Site."
But if the past is prologue in West Goshen, the future may hold no treat for park lovers.
Just look at what the folks in West Goshen did when they got their hands on a piece of property on Fern Hill Road. They created something called West Goshen Community Park, acres of land about as far away from what you want from a park as Modena is from Malvern. It's a parceled-out wasteland of segmented recreation areas that, taken together, form the suburban sprawl of a place to play.
Over here are the tennis courts. Over there is the Little League field. Here's the adult league field. Here's the regular youth soccer league field. Here's the concrete block amphitheater. Here's the asphalt walking path, 0.8 miles long, if you are counting.
Even the name gives you the creeps. "Community Park?" Reminds you of the beer bottles in old sitcoms whose labels read, plainly, "Beer." "Community Park" is a name that makes generic drugs stand up and take pride in their individuality.
It isn't as though they couldn't have found a good name. "Fern Hill Park" conjures up pictures of glistening green rolling fields, a place you linger with the dog just one more minute after the sun goes down, because it's just so darned nice outside.
Nearby is the site of the township's historic weeping beech tree (a sign tells you that). You can't find a more appealing name than "Historic Weeping Beech Tree Park." I see that, and my picnic basket is packed and ready.
Contrast that recreational monstrosity with West Chester's signature park, Everhart Park, at the western edge of the borough. In a quiet one-square-block area, you have everything you want in a place to go play, or walk, or cook out, or sit at a picnic table on a cool day in July, have a turkey and Swiss sandwich and read the paper.
Everhart, opened in 1920, when the world apparently had not come under the spell of "organized recreation," has meandering walkways, old-fashioned swing sets, shaded groves and a field the perfect size for a game of Frisbee.
And trees. Oh my, has it trees. Towering sycamores line one side on Brandywine Avenue. There are crab apples and tulip poplars, Kwanzan cherries and dawn sequoias. Ask an expert what trees are at Everhart and you get told, "You want it, we got it."
Whereas Community Park has a lovely view of the parking lot at Animas Corp., motto: "Bringing New Life to Insulin Therapy."
Everhart is a place to go have fun, not to recreate. You could tell that this past week, when a foot of snow blanketed the borough, yet footprints lined almost every inch of the fields at Everhart.
Even when outdoor recreation wasn't in season, according to the schedule posted at Community Park, people wanted to go to Everhart to play.