A rehabilitation of the Lopes Park playground to bring it up to modern safety standards, renovations that preserve the look of the former East Wareham Elementary School, and more planting beds for the Damien’s Place Community Gardens are among $1.5 million dollars of requests for Community Preservation funding.

The Community Preservation Act lets towns place a surtax on property values above $100,000, to be used for historic preservation, open space preservation, recreation or affordable housing.  

The town’s Community Preservation Committee studies the needs of the town and evaluates proposals for the funding, but funding ultimately needs to be approved at Town Meeting. 

Lopes Park. Described by Community Preservation Committee chair Patrick Lester as one of the oldest parks on the South Coast, the wooden structures of Lopes Memorial Park make the playground unique — and outdated. 

That’s why the town is seeking $650,000 to replace what’s there with safe, up-to-date equipment. 

The current wooden playground at Lopes Park was built in 1983, with over 1,500 Wareham residents volunteering their time and effort to construct it, according to Select Board Chair Judith Whiteside, who spoke at a preliminary meeting before the Community Preservation Committee on Wednesday, July 10. 

The town first discussed replacing the playground when its wooden bridge broke, said Marie Greig, who is on the board of Wareham CORE, a nonprofit focusing on recreation in town. 

“Very easily, a child could have gotten hurt,” she said. “Right away, Municipal Maintenance came and fixed it, but it’s past time” to replace the structure.

The town plans to have different equipment for younger and older kids, as well as a general “have at it” section, Whiteside said. Exactly what playground equipment will be bought has not yet been decided, though Whiteside said safety and accessibility will both be key. 

The goal is to have an “entirely unique and safe environment,” Whiteside said. 

East Wareham Elementary School. When the South Shore Community Action Council purchased the East Wareham Elementary School in 2022, it did so with the intention of renovating the building into a home for its Head Start Pre-K program. 

The school was constructed around 1920, and it was last used for instruction in 2014, when it hosted pre-K students. 

The Council has received other sources of funding which will foot the majority of the renovation’s $4.7 million bill. It’s asking the Community Preservation Committee for $369,598 specifically to restore the building’s exterior siding. 

The Council plans to replace the existing shingles with fresh white cedar shingles, said the Council’s Chief Financial Officer Cheryll White. It intends to keep the look of the building the same, preserving its historic appearance. 

Damien’s Pantry Community Gardens. It’s not quite harvest season yet for the community gardens at Damien’s Place Food Pantry, but the Pantry is already looking toward the next year’s plantings. 

The Pantry constructed 33 beds of community garden space this past spring, as part of the construction efforts at its new location on Marion Road. 

So far, all the beds are being actively gardened, said Damien’s Place board member Nick Decas. While the program got off to a “clunky” start, he said, all the beds are now full, and there’s interest in more for next year. 

The Pantry is requesting $33,800 in funding for 20 additional beds, an additional irrigation line and a fence around the community garden area.  

Town Hall. The seat of Wareham’s municipal government at 54 Marion Road is also one of the town’s historic buildings. 

The structure was built with money from the Works Progress Administration during the New Deal, said Whiteside, speaking during a preliminary hearing on the project. 

To preserve the historic character of the building, the town is seeking $80,000 to evaluate the condition of the building’s exterior and figure out how to preserve its historic windows among other features. 

Notably, this money would be spent just on evaluation: Whiteside estimated the restoration bill for the windows could be north of $1 million. 

“It’s an evaluation to protect an asset that we own,” said Whiteside. “You can’t have an asset that is central, very visible, and not take care of it.”

Weweantic River Corridor. The Buzzards Bay Coalition is requesting funding for the Weweantic River Corridor Conservation Project, a major conservation effort to preserve a large parcel of forested uplands, cranberry bogs and wetlands at the headwaters of the Weweantic River. 

It includes over 200 acres of land to be preserved within Wareham’s borders. 

The project is seeking funding from a variety of sources, and has secured $1.5 million from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, according to the office of Senator Marc Pacheco. 

The Buzzards Bay Coalition is asking for $375,000 in Community Preservation Act funding, according to Lester. He said the project will be officially presented to the committee at its next meeting on Wednesday, July 24, and more details will be available at that time.