UPPER DELAWARE RIVER VALLEY — Work is progressing on a pair of riverside-improvement projects along the Delaware River: the Callicoon Riverside Park in the Town of Delaware, and the Highland River Access near the hamlet of Barryville. 

Both the park and the access could open to the public in the summer, but work remains to be done on both.

Riverside in Callicoon

The Callicoon Riverside Park, a county-owned park-to-be along the Delaware River in the hamlet of Callicoon, has been under development since 2018. 

Conceptual design for the project began with the Trust for Public Land (TPL), a nonprofit that acquires land for conservation. TPL was approached to conserve the property when it was up for sale and at risk of development, and bought the property with plans to split it three ways: Sullivan County got approximately 39 acres for a public riverside park, the Town of Delaware got approximately six acres for a new wastewater treatment plant and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) got approximately two acres for a public boat launch. 

The county took ownership of its land in the spring of 2022. Preliminary plans include five phases of construction, with early construction including a dog park and hiking trails, and later plans including a pedestrian bridge, wildlife-viewing platforms and restrooms. 

The county might do some work at the site over the next few weeks, to see if it could open the park to the public in the summer, said Sullivan County Director of Communications Dan Hust. 

“If the park does open, however, it will be a largely unimproved state, with just some bushtrails and river viewing points available,” he said.

Access for Highland

The Highland access, a DEC river-access point between Barryville and the Roebling Bridge, closed to the public in October of 2022. 

The county planned to improve the access by installing native plants, an ADA-compliant path to the river and signage with educational information. The project is the result of eight years of planning; initial engineering estimates were drawn up in 2015, and initial bids for construction were issued in 2021. 

Work on the access had to adapt to “unforeseen circumstances,” according to a resolution from the Sullivan County Legislature’s planning, real property and economic development committee meeting on April 6. Workers found an extra 200 feet of a historic canal wall, and encountered unstable soil conditions. The project team installed an extra 43 tons of “surge stone,” a type of rock aggregate used for erosion control, and changed the boat launch to work around the canal wall, among other changes. 

The county anticipated wrapping up the project on April 11, according to Hust. But “the DEC will be working to complete the parking lot, and the DOT [New York State Department of Transportation] has to do some guardrail work, so while it’s entirely possible the access point will open this summer, it’s not a firm guarantee yet.”