The Laubach Park Master Plan has drawn criticism from a neighbor who lives across the street for its proposed diagonal parking along Lehigh Avenue.

“I was absolutely shocked to see they were going to take out numerous trees and put in diagonal parking,” Dorothy Kratzer of Lehigh Avenue told the Salisbury Township Board of Commissioners during the courtesy of the floor portion of the Aug. 25 meeting.

“It’s already a chaotic situation when the games are over. They back out and it’s hazardous,” Kratzer claimed.

“Now they want to put parking all the way down the road,” Kratzer continued.

“Now I can look down and see grass and trees and water. And now I will be looking at parked cars,” Kratzer said. “It’s a small neighborhood,” Kratzer added.

In the Laubach plan, the parking lot on the north side of Laubach would be eliminated to make way for an inclusive playground and a pickleball court.

There would be 35 on-street parking spaces created along Lehigh Avenue, with curbing and sidewalks.

The parking lot along Fairview Avenue would remain and be revamped.

The final public hearing for the William H. Laubach Memorial Park and Franko Farm Recreation Area Master Plan was Aug. 15 in the Salisbury Township Municipal Building.

Commissioner Vice President Robert Martucci Jr., a member of the Laubach and Franko master plan committee, responded to Kratzer’s concerns at the Aug. 25 township meeting.

“I think they need more parking because they anticipate more activities,” Martucci said.

“I can’t see that our little bit of passive recreation will be [replaced] there to increase sports activities,” Kratzer said.

“I just can’t fathom this. It’s going to add to the sports activities that are there,” Kratzer said.

The Salisbury Youth Association uses Laubach for practice and games.

The Laubach plan calls for moving tennis courts from there to Franko Park, removing a softball field, relocating the basketball courts closer to Lehigh Avenue, shifting the baseball field and relocating the football field, among other changes.

The Laubach plan also calls for adding a 0.6-mile perimeter pathway, planting native trees and restoring riparian buffers around the pond and along the creek.

A pavilion would be built closer to Lehigh Avenue. The location of the pavilion now in Laubach is considered to be unsafe.

Restrooms, a concession stand and a storage shed would be built. The Laubach restrooms do not now comply with Americans with Disabilities Act regulations.

Township resident Jan Keim said of Laubach, “I am familiar with that area. It’s a very wet area. You take down that many trees and it’s going to create more runoff.

“At one point that park was wooded,” Keim continued. “They took that whole grove of trees. The Sarko family donated the land.”

“I don’t think it was intended to take trees down,” Commissioner Debra Brinton, a member of the Laubach and Frank master plan committee, said .

“A lot of the trees taken down were done by PPL and that’s in their right-of-way,” Brinton continued.

The PPL Electric Utilities transmission line $35-million rebuilding project is in several phases. The first, the Elliot Heights Project, which has been completed, extends roughly from Elliot Heights in west Bethlehem, across Lehigh Mountain and East Susquehanna Street, through Laubach Park, across East Emmaus Avenue at Fairview Avenue, where it ties into the Hosensack-Seidersville Transmission Line Project. Single-shaft 95-foot-tall steel poles replaced poles and lattice-style towers.

“I don’t think the intention was to take down any more trees,” Martucci said.

“Our first step is to do a study of the water coming off of Lehigh Mountain,” Martucci continued. “The object is to make that area absorb the runoff.”

The first priority at the 14.25-acre Laubach Park is a hydrology study, Laubach Park Master Plan consultant Leonard J. Policelli, landscape architect, project manager, Urban Research & Development Corp., Bethlehem, said at the Aug. 15 hearing.

The study would identify wetlands. The plan includes vegetated swales to cleanse and slow stormwater before it empties into Laubach Pond or Trout Creek, the latter of which traverses the park.

Brinton emphasized the Laubach pavilion is to be “moved for safety.

“Everything that was done was to improve the park,” Brinton said.

Said Brinton to Kratzer, “Bob [Martucci] and I will bring these concerns to our next meeting [of the master plan committee].”

The master site plan committee meeting is to hold its final meeting in September.

The Laubach and Franko master plan is expected to be finalized and presented to the township board of commissioners for approval before the end of 2016.

If approved, application for grants for Laubach and Franko improvements would begin in April 2017 with contracts awarded by the end of 2017 and construction to start in 2018 or 2019.