NEWBURYPORT — After months of meticulous and tender-loving care to get Market Landing Park looking lush, a section of the new park’s east side lawn may need to be reseeded next spring after the city on Tuesday finished covering it with dozens of wet city docks for the winter.
Parks manager Mike Hennessey said growth tarps were laid down to protect the new lawn before the 36 docks were placed on it. Despite confidence the tarp will minimize damage, Hennessey pledged to reseed the grass if necessary once the docks are placed back in the Merrimack River.
“I don’t want people to be surprised or to fret that the docks are on the turf,” he said. “It has all been part of the plan. We will react to how the lawn looks in the springtime and repair it rather quickly.”
For the past 30 years, public docks have been stored for the winter in the municipal waterfront east parking lot. But the parking lot no longer exists after the city opened the east side of the $6 million first phase of park construction and expansion project on the same spot.
The project saw the installation of trellis swings, hammocks, as well as a Clipper City Rail Trail extension that have all proven to be popular with residents and visitors alike.
A pair of new lawns were also put in on the east and west sides of the Newburyport Waterfront Trust-managed Central Waterfront Park. But a hot, dry summer kept the city from opening the east side grass to the public until early October.
Less than a month and a half later, the city began removing its docks from the central waterfront area for the winter.
On Tuesday, the remaining docks were hoisted out of the river and strategically placed onto the tarp like a giant Jenga puzzle. They will go back in the water in late March, early April.
“If I could avoid it, I would. But we can’t,” Hennessey said. “So, it’s a lot cheaper to reseed than to move the docks off-site somewhere and my lawn is covered for the winter.”
Hennessey said the plan was approved after long talks with the city’s Planning Department, Mayor Sean Reardon’s office as well as harbormaster Paul Hogg about just where to store the docks. The new lawn, he added made the most sense.
“I had been looking at doing this, even during the park’s initial planning stages. Moving the docks anywhere else would have been cost prohibitive,” he said. “We discussed putting a patio area in to store the docks on. But that was a little cost prohibitive, too. So, I just said, ‘listen, if it’s going to be an issue with the docks and killing the grass, we’ll make sure that we reseed in the spring.’”
Since the city had a crane in the central waterfront to haul the docks out of the river in the first place, Hogg said it made the most sense to simply move them over to the nearby Market Landing Park area. To take the docks anywhere else he added would cost Newburyport taxpayers between $5,000 and $8,000.
Planning Director Andrew Port said the current dock storage plan has been in place for about three years.
“We all agreed these would essentially on the waterfront, even though it will cause some temporary disturbance to the grass,” he said. “But this was the plan, originally.”
Hennessey said the winter turf blankets, known as growth tarps, will help protect the grass despite the enormous weight.
“That will help the turf grow when it breaks dormancy in the early in the spring. It also protects the turf,” he said. “That way, the lawn there will be lush and green when we remove the tarps in the spring. We do this for the turf on the inside of (Bradley Fuller Field Track), every winter and the fields are a nice and thick.”
Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.