East Lyme ― Proponents of passive recreation in the area surrounding Darrow Pond say a disc golf course and an outdoor classroom are ways to enhance what’s already there..

Parks and Recreation Commission member Todd Donovan, who serves as chairman of the Darrow Pond subcommittee, last week told the Board of Selectmen he has been working for three years to formalize a plan for the “underutilized and underappreciated” property.

“In the end, my goal is to preserve and to enhance, not to develop,” he said.

Comprising 301 acres, the tract accessible from Mostowy Road’s narrow loop through the north end of town features open fields, forest, wetlands, vernal pools and the pond. The property for decades had been a battleground in the fight between preservation and development before the town purchased it for $4.1 million in 2011.

Parks and Recreation Department Director Jerry Lokken said he’ll be seeking funding for the first phase of the project in his department request for the upcoming budget year that begins in July. He did not provide any cost estimates.

Selectwoman Rose Ann Hardy worried what could happen if the spot that currently draws a few carloads of hikers at any given time grows to encompass disc golfers, bikers and busloads of students.

“Oftentimes I go up there on an afternoon,” she said. “Sometimes there’s only two or three cars. It’s quiet; it’s peaceful. I can get out and walk around. I can relax. I can breathe.”

Landscape architect Phil Barlow of the Hartford-based environmental planning firm FHI Studio noted the 300-acre property’s history as a colonial timber lot and farm. In more modern times, it held a JC Penney warehouse and was the proposed home to a golf course and a sprawling 55+ community.

About 200 acres have been preserved for open space and passive recreation. Selectman last year gave control of the remaining 100 acres outside of the conservation easement to the recreation department, which promptly commissioned a master plan from FHI Studio using $22,000 of the town’s $5.46 million allocation of federal pandemic-relief aid.

While town documents show officials have considered putting athletic fields, municipal facilities or a public drinking water supply on those 100 acres, Barlow described a focus now on purely passive pursuits.

Barlow said 600 responses to a 2021 survey led the team to recommend expanded trails for hiking and cycling, a disc golf course, an outdoor classroom and a dock for educational purposes like water sampling by students.

He said the plan makes no changes in areas that have been identified as sensitive ecological habitats like one belonging to the New England cottontail, a rabbit identified as species of special concern in Connecticut. An area of rare pitch pine trees and a meadow will also be left alone.

“We think it’s equal parts recreation, education and conservation,” Barlow said of the plan.

Lokken said a second phase would be dependent on the success of the first. It could involve a parking lot renovation, construction of a natural play area, practice course for mountain bikes, additional trails, and boardwalks over wetlands and the edge of the pond.

The plan envisions a roughly 30-space parking lot, according to Barlow.

Previous owners had pitched an 18-hole golf course and a 600-unit housing development for the property over a 10-year span that saw bankruptcy, lawsuits and a foreclosure. The fight was so contentious that the developers behind the proposal accepted a $650,000 payoff from the town in exchange for, among other things, agreeing not to buy land, file permit applications or “otherwise engage in development” in East Lyme for 20 years.

Selectwoman Candice Carlson told fellow members she doesn’t see the new proposal as an example of development. Instead, she said it’s about taking the natural beauty of the area and giving it “a little bit more life.”

First Selectman Dan Cunningham, too, signaled his support for “passive use rather than active development.”

e.regan@theday.com