College Township, State College Collaborating to Manage and Guide Future of Thompson Woods Preserve

College Township and State College are working together to guide the future of the Thompson Woods Preserve through two recently formed committees representing both municipalities.

Bill Keough, chair of the Thompson Woods Preserve Governance Committee, spoke to State College Borough Council on Monday night about priorities developed by the new, collaborative governing structure for the natural area and what lies ahead.

ClearWater Conservancy acquired the 43.36 acres of forested land in November 2000 and transferred it to the borough and township as a preserved natural area restricted to passive outdoor recreation use to minimize disturbance of sensitive plants and wildlife. The preserve is located between Walnut Springs in State College and Centre Hills Village and Squirrel Drive in College Township, with 6.75 acres in the borough and 36.61 acres in the township.

By 2003, responsibility for maintenance decisions was assigned to the Centre Region Parks and Recreation Authority (CRPRA) and governance was assigned to a subcommittee of the the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center Advisory Committee.

But in 2018, the governance subcommittee was dissolved due to lack of activity and last year the borough and township executed executed an intermunicipal agreement to form a new governance structure for the preserve with governance and advisory committees.

The governance committee is composed of two representatives each from the township and borough and one from the CRPRA. It is charged with oversight of all preserve matters, requesting repairs and maintenance, coordinating initiatives recommended by the advisory committee and referring projects and issues to the advisory committee.

The advisory committee is made up of representatives from ClearWater Conservancy, the Thompson Woods Property Owners Association, the Vallamont neighborhood, the Centre County Conservation District, the CRPRA and the Penn State Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, as well as a non-voting member from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. It identifies potential issues and projects, provides insight and technical recommendations on stewardship matters and responds to requests from the governance committee.

“We look at the advisory committee as our boots on the ground,” Keough said. “They’re the folks that have the interaction with this preserve and are in a position to provide us on the governance side of things with what’s going on in the preserve and what we might need to address.”

The committees began meeting about four months ago and identified four main priorities.

First among those, Keough said, is branding and education to help the public understand the difference between a park and preserve, and how the latter can be used. As a preserve, Thompson Woods has no equipment or playing fields and is generally meant to be used for activities such as walking, running, hiking, nature study and education.

A few trails in the preserve are dedicated to biking, but Keough said the rules governing the preserve make it clear that “we cannot and it is not appropriate to open the whole preserve and all of its trails to biking.”

“We’re aware that the Thompson Woods Preserve provides a very nice non-traffic trip from College Township and their new development up on the hill [Aspen Heights apartments on Squirrel Drive] all the way down to Walnut Springs in terms of a bikeway,” he said. “I think we’re going to continue to have that, however the upgrading of that will be one of the work plans. We have some limitations.”

For other branding initiatives, the committee has begun worked on a GIS-based website for the preserve and is working with a Penn State group to develop signage, of which there is almost none currently on the property.

“Before we start engaging with the public, it’s important for us to develop the resources and to be able to have people go there by themselves and know the trails and have an online resource,” Jasmine Fields, State College sustainability program officer, said. “We really need to build the presence of this is what this area is and collectively determine what should be happening there and what shouldn’t happen there. Brand that, then engage with the public, do maybe a guided tour or something like that and then people will likely start to use it more.”

The Aspen Heights development, a student apartment complex on the former Hilltop Mobile Home Park site, is adjacent to Thompson Woods and its recent opening provides another reason to ramp up public education about the preserve, Keough said.

“With the new development that took place up on the hill we have yet to see what the impact is going to be with regard to users, but that’s one of the reasons we felt as strongly as we did that the whole branding thing needs to be looked at now,” he said. “We’ve got a whole new population sitting on the doorstep and we need to get ahold of that early so that it heads in the direction all of us would like to see.”

Another priority is maintenance, including upkeep of access points, litter management and safety. CRPR regularly checks for problems, responds to maintenance requests and has done work on the trails.

“But that’s more of an informal kind of relationship as opposed to a formal maintenance program,” Keough said.

The third priority is vegetation and forest management, including implementing a forest management plan and determining how to deal with invasive species. In a park, invasive species of plants would be removed, but Keough said some have suggested that in a preserve they should be kept and educational signs should be placed on trails.

“This is forested area that is in a definitional preserve status. So the issue of forest management is an issue we need to address,” Keough said.

Enforcement of regulations is the final priority identified by the committee. While there have not been “any real serious issues,” some have come up and the committee sees some possibilities down the line.

“One of the pending things that is coming up, part of the pathways and trails in the preserve are dedicated to be allowed to be used for bicycles,” Keough said. “On the preserve side of the rules and regulations, the issue of motorized is also called out as a no-no. So now how do we live with e-bikes?”

Going forward, the committees will be working with the borough and township councils and staff to develop a long-term vision for the preserve. A questionnaire will be sent to the councils, and potentially planning commissions, “to start getting parameters of what this preserve is going to look like looking forward into the future,” Keough said.

“In order for us on the governance side of things to move forward with whatever we’re going to present to the public representing this, we need to have a sense of what the vision is for this piece,” he added. “With regard to that, we did not want to develop our own vision for that without having adequate input from the governing councils.”

Decisions also will need to be made on how to budget for and fund that vision, and who will perform the work that needs to be done. Keough noted that College Township has a $2,500 line item in its budget for the preserve.

“I’m not saying you’ve got to do that to, but saying we’ve got to work out a way in which we can pay our bills,” he said. “We have no bills at the moment, none, but we’re gonna. So we need to work that out between the two agencies.”

Keough plans to update the councils twice a year and get feedback to take back to the governance committee.

“There’s very interesting discussions to be had about where this goes and how this goes in terms of the future,” he said. “We are not working at and don’t intend to work at a racetrack pace on this stuff. We want to do our due diligence on the things that are ultimately going to come out of it.”