Kite-flying competition to headline event at the former South Jersey landfill transformed by an award-winning design from Rutgers landscape architecture graduate students
EDITOR’S NOTE: Members of the media may contact Beth Ravit, Rutgers Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability, by phone at 201-774-1614 (cell) or by email at ravit@envsci.rutgers.edu or Wolfram Hoefer, Rutgers professor of landscape architecture, by phone at 732-710-6474 (cell) or by email at whoefer@aesop.rutgers.edu.
WHAT: “Come Fly a Kite” Earth Day event, scavenger hunt, food vendors and kite-flying demonstrations by the South Jersey Kite Flyers Association.
WHEN: Sunday, April 21, from 1 to 4 p.m.
WHERE: Voorhees Environmental Park, Centennial Boulevard, opposite Centennial Mills.
WHO: About 30 students from the Voorhees Middle School will fly their homemade kites in a competition judged by the South Jersey Kite Flyers Association.
Voorhees Mayor Michael R. Mignogna and council members will award a prize for the best kite.
Representatives from Voorhees Environmental and Cultural Education Foundation (VECEF), the Voorhees Green Team and the Voorhees Environmental Commission will be on hand to celebrate the Earth Day event.
BACKGROUND: The closed landfill on Centennial Boulevard, in Voorhees, NJ, is being reinvented as the Voorhees Environmental Park, a five-year collaborative project of Voorhees Township, VECEF and the Rutgers Center for Urban Environmental Sustainability (CUES).
Guided by Rutgers CUES faculty, graduate students from the Department of Landscape Architecture created a number of designs to turn the former brownfield site into a public park, integrating open space, solar power generation and storm water management. The final Rutgers design received an award from the New Jersey Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Voorhees Township is working to find a creative solution for funding this new public space initiative by designating a portion of the site to install the solar power array. The financial incentives from the array will support building and maintaining the park.
Learn about this Brownfields to Greenfield project at the CUES website.
