Preservationists and county at odds on a park both treasure

I thought I knew Cooper River Park until Kevin Cook showed me what he calls "the Grand Staircase."

This elaborate, tiered structure - composed of three sets of steps and landings - descends a wooded embankment along South Park Drive like a waterfall of stone.

The federal Works Progress Administration built the 35-step stairway out of sparkle-flecked Pennsylvania mica (also called Wissahickon schist) in the late 1930s.

"It's incredible, the craftsmanship," says Cook, who lives in Cherry Hill. "To me, it's art."

The biggest and most impressive of a trio of stairways connecting Collingswood streets to the park, the structure is among the many reasons Cook and fellow preservationist Bob Shinn hope to have the entire five-mile, 583-acre ribbon of green between Camden and Haddonfield designated a state historic district.

"A nomination is pending before the New Jersey State Review Board for Historic Sites," Bob Considine, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Tuesday in an e-mail.

Great news. But, wait: Camden County doesn't want the park to become a historic district.

In a 12-page letter to the DEP on Feb. 27, County Administrator Ross G. Angelilla objected to "any consideration or reconsideration" of such a designation.

A historic district would be "an encumbrance" to park improvement projects, such as the ongoing $28 million effort to upgrade infrastructure between Route 130 and Cuthbert Boulevard, county spokesman Dan Keashen said.

"The park is a living, breathing thing," he continued. "It can't just remain something that was attractive and used by people in the 1950s."

Even the park's handsome boathouse, which opened in 2006, would have faced "bureaucratic" obstacles under the historic district designation, Keashen said. And historic preservation already is "built in" to open-space and other state programs that provide funding for improvements, he added.

"We're looking to see this process through," said Shinn, a Cherry Hill resident who is on the Camden County Historical Society's board. "What is the county's reason for opposing it? Is it just, 'We don't want to have to get anybody's permission to do what we want in our park?' "

Said Cook, also of Cherry Hill, "It's not [the county's] park. It's the taxpayers' park."

Cook became interested in county park issues in 2012, when he fought to save a charming, if dilapidated, original clubhouse building at the Walworth Park section of Cooper River Park in Cherry Hill.

The county, which had essentially ignored the vacant structure for decades, delayed demolition at Cook's request. But the structure was demolished last winter - just as the state was first considering historic district status for Cooper River Park.

"That wouldn't happen [if there had been] a historic district," says Tom Knoche, an advocate for Camden's Gateway Park portion of Cooper River Park.

Although the state created Gateway, along the Admiral Wilson Boulevard, in 2000, the county until recently seemed content to have the park remain locked behind gates.

Different as they are, the Walworth and Gateway issues suggest that Camden County's stewardship can be . . . inconsistent.

But some of the strength of the county's excellent Vision Plan - now underway in the park's central or "lake" portion - lies in the fact that much of what was built 80 years ago, such as the Grand Staircase, has endured.

A historic district would help ensure that what makes Cooper River Park special now will be there for another 80 years.