Two property owners impacted by an access road to a would-be park are petitioning the New Albany-Floyd County Parks and Recreation board to consider alternative methods.

Ed Deters and David Lind say they don’t oppose the development of Woodlands Park along Budd Road, but they are concerned with the safety of the proposed road that would escort visitors to the facility.

The route utilizes an existing gravel road with accessibility available only through Lind’s property. Lind, Deters and other families living near the park use a private road for daily travel.

The road is big enough now for emergency vehicles and delivery trucks to use, but paving it, as planned by the parks department, would narrow the route to one lane and make it impassible for fire trucks, Lind and Deters argued during a board meeting Tuesday.

The blueprint calls for people to park in a public lot near the private road and then walk to Woodlands. Public standards would require handicap accessibility and thus the road would be paved, with four feet designated for pedestrian use.

That would leave six feet of the road for vehicles, which Deters said isn’t big enough for a fire truck in case of an emergency. Large transport trucks also use the road to move logged wood captured from the forest bed, Deters added.

Having pedestrians walking along the route when trucks come by could be disastrous, he said. The bridges along the path would be the most cumbersome and dangerous, Deters said.

“It’s an accident waiting to happen,” he said.

Deters and Lind lost a court case over the route this month when Judge Terrence Cody ruled the parks department has the right to declare eminent domain and purchase the property needed for the road from the defendants.

Lind said the main objection has always been safety and liability, though he stated he felt the parks department didn’t negotiate obtaining his property in good faith.

“This thing needs to be done right so we can be proud of what happens,” he said, adding he would be satisfied if the road was at least two lanes.

But Rick Fox, attorney for the parks board, said the engineers that designed the plan testified in court to its validity. Lind and the other property owners affected by the road could never reach a consensus on how they wanted the parks board to proceed and that led to the court decision, Fox said.

The parks board approved eminent domain for the properties about six months ago, and the defendants have until Nov. 8 to appeal Cody’s ruling.

Deters suggested another route to access Woodlands that would allot for larger vehicles to use the road. The route he proposed would include his property, which he offered to donate to the parks department.

Board members seemed interested, but time is of the essence. Some of the framework for Woodlands has already been funded through a $250,000 Indiana Land and Water Conservation Department grant.

The deadline to use the grant money is approaching, and parks board member Steve LaDuke said one extension was already approved last year.

He doubts a second extension would be granted, which would leave the department responsible for the $50,000 already spent and it would lose the remaining $200,000.

Parks Superintendent Roger Jeffers wasn’t working for the department when the Woodlands plan and the purchase of the park property was approved, but said he’s familiar with the concerns of Lind and Deters.

But it would be cost prohibitive to make the proposed route two lanes and it’s late in the game to change the plans entirely, he said.

Jeffers has a phone conference scheduled with the state today to see if the grant can be extended, but he agreed with LaDuke that it’s unlikely.

Losing the grant would likely mean no park, as the department doesn’t have the money to fund the infrastructure needed.

But an appeal of Cody’s ruling could also cost the parks department the grant, LaDuke conceded.

The board took into consideration designing wider rails for portions of the suggested route that go over bridges to guarantee emergency access, though engineers of the plan believe the road to be safe, according to Fox.

Deters said that even if the road is extended, it’s not a good choice because the area in question floods regularly and the road would wash-out within two years.