Forward Township has big plans for Ash Stop Park
FORWARD TWP — Township supervisors outlined their plans for the future of Ash Stop Park during a meeting Thursday night, March 13.
In the near future, the park, located just outside the municipal building on Ash Stop Road, will receive a brand-new, ADA-accessible walking trail and pollinator garden, with the help of $226,100 in grant funding from both the state and Butler County.
“We’re turning it into a recreational park and a nature preserve,” said township supervisor Mark Wilson. “We’re going to make it more of an attraction for walkers.”
The bulk of the funding comes in the form of a $216,100 grant from Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, while another $10,000 comes from Butler County’s Parks and Recreation department. The state grant was officially announced in November 2024.
The county’s parks and recreation department is in charge of managing the grants.
“The board is acting kind of like a manager of the project, to make sure everything’s done the way it’s supposed to be done,” Wilson said. “We give them the plan, but then they are actually the person who holds the purse strings on the money. The county will administer the grant for us as we do the project.”
Some work has already taken place on the park revitalization project. The former baseball diamond — which Wilson says has not seen a lot of use in recent years — has already been removed, along with the bleachers, the backstop, the dugouts and any other trace a baseball field used to be there.
In addition, the planting of the pollinator garden near the former baseball field is well underway.
“Some plantings have been done by the Butler County Conservation District, courtesy of Ryan Harr,” said Forward Township manager Tom Hartwig.
In May 2024, a group of seventh- and eighth-grade students from Ryan Gloyer Middle School also contributed to the baseball field cleanup and pollinator garden planting as part of an annual community service project called “Community GrOWN.”
According to Wilson, the hopes are for the walking trail to improve access to the park’s canoe ramp, as well as connect park-goers to another nearby walking trail: the Mary McElhinny Nature Path.
“It’ll connect with the existing walking trail that’s already down there and it’ll actually make a complete route where people can get on there and go through the woods and come out,” Wilson said. “And it’ll give them access to the canoe ramp.”
Hartwig says that the grant money will also cover a new parking lot for the park, as well as benches for the new walking trail.
