Town Planner Joe Laydon began the meeting by introducing the project, briefly describing the long history that the Fisherville Mill site has had within the Town, and its recent funding from The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor for projects to make the site a replicable model for cross-disciplinary education and remediation throughout the region.\u00a0 One aspect of the project included the collaboration with students from the Conway School of Landscape Design to create a site vision that would highlight the dynamic landscape of the parcel.\u00a0 The students that developed\u00a0the vision as their\u00a0final consulting project, and had spent the majority of their final trimester at the Conway School working up to the town meeting.<\/p>\n
![\"Jillian](\"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/246\/2015\/06\/IMG_4459.jpg\")
<\/a>Jillian Ferguson, Jeff Frisch and Hillary Collins of the Conway School present the culmination of their final semester\u2019s work on the Fisherville Mill Site \u201cCreating a Teaching Landscape\u201d project.<\/p><\/div>\n
From here, students Jillian Ferguson, Jeff Frisch and Hillary Collins walked the community through various visions of the site, highlighting and building upon the current nature, community and industry attractions of the land.\u00a0 Some potential future enhancements included creating a \u201cghost\u201d of the old mill building, using old granite slabs at the site to draw an open-air outline of the building footprint, including remnants of the old factory gears and other large machinery.\u00a0 Also proposed was an amphitheater overseeing a new boat launch and dock on the Fisherville Pond, an upgrade to the current Eco-Machine, boardwalks and footpaths along the waterfront, and observation deck, shading for the Mill Villages Park, and a new design for the future mixed use development that the site hopes to ultimately construct.\u00a0 The idea is that each entity can stand as a discrete project that can be funded when the opportunity arises, so that the town can advance to the final vision at its own pace.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Site owner, Gene Bernat, talks about the positive impact that the remediated Fisherville Mill Site has already had on the community.<\/p><\/div>\n
After describing the proposed enhancements, the students presented how these projects would appear within the bounds of the natural landscape of the site with two potential sketches. They invited community participation in the design of the final plan, using color-coded stickers to indicate how feasible each design aspect was. \u00a0While Planning Board and community members filed up to get a closer look at the plans, Gene Bernat, the owner of the site, gave a few words about the larger vision of the Fisherville Mill project.\u00a0 \u201cWe want to create a place that people want to be; that highlights the natural and social history of the site, as well as the past and future science\u201d, he said.\u00a0 The site has already received a lot of attention both inside the Grafton Community and internationally, for its community designed Mill Villages Park and the innovative way in which the Eco-Machine remediates the contaminated water of the Blackstone River. \u201cThe park vastly improved South Grafton\u201d, continued Gene, \u201cand now we have the potential to do so much more\u201d.<\/p>\n