A new system of trails in East Concord will launch with two guided hikes Saturday, after a group of volunteers completed a summer’s worth of work.
The trails, including two loops of 2.3 miles and 1.5 miles, stretch through part of the area known as Broken Ground, between Curtisville Road and Portsmouth Street.
For Fran Philippe, who lives nearby and will serve as one of the trail stewards, the 10 a.m. event Saturday will be the culmination of a long effort to maintain the area as open space.
She said it was 2000 when she first got word a development known as Whispering Heights was being proposed for Broken Ground. She and others walked the neighborhood and put signs on people’s doors to let them know about the planning board meetings on the subject.
Before long, 1,500 people all over the city had signed a petition opposing the project. But by 2008, the planning board ultimately approved a proposal to build 87 houses and a road on the 270-acre parcel.
“For eight years, we went to planning board meetings and zoning board meetings and we took them to court one time,” Philippe recalled. “We just kept prolonging it until they finally got all their wetlands variances.”
It looked like the area would be developed with $300,000-plus homes, she said, until the bottom dropped out of the housing market in 2008 and global markets plunged into a financial crisis.
The property owners couldn’t find a developer to build the houses, according to Monitor archives.
The city bought 270 acres there in November 2013 for $975,000, acting assistant city planner Beth Fenstermacher said, and also holds a conservation easement on 113 acres of adjacent Unitil-owned, where power lines run through.
After the purchase, plans started forming for a trail system, Philippe said, “and this year, a whole bunch of have been working really hard, and now we have these gorgeous, gorgeous trails.”
It’s more than 5 miles in all with two parking areas, one on Curtisville Road and one on Portsmouth Street.
Philippe, a retired teacher who has lived in East Concord for 39 years, said she’s seen all kinds of wildlife out in that area, especially around the beaver pond contained within the trails.
And she’s happy to see some more mileage among the city’s trails on the east side of the river.
“It’s just a joy to have these,” she said. “I have to say that because I can walk out my backdoor . . . and come right up here without having to get in my car.”
The trails will be launched Saturday at 10 a.m. with two simultaneous guided hikes of different distances. One will be a 1.3 mile loop around the pond and the other will be a 2.3 mile loop through the woods.
Both will begin from the parking lot at the Curtisville Road trailhead, about a mile past Broken Ground School.