NEW SCOTLAND — As housing developments are springing up in northeastern New Scotland, work is progressing around a new town park there.

Four members of the New Scotland Town Board met on Monday morning to approve  spending $7,200 for soil testing as the first step in a process that would reduce a hump on Hilton Road.

The centerpiece of the new park is a massive 1898 barn built by Captain Joseph Hilton that was moved across Route 85A to save it from demolition for a housing development. The Mohawk-Hudson Land
Conservancy gave 14 acres to the town, largely possible because of a donation by the great-granddaughter of Captain Hilton, Jennifer Hilton.

“We’re hoping this would be kind of a centerpiece for the town,” Mark King, the conservancy’s executive director, said in announcing the donation to the town board in December. “It’s likely to be the only green space out there.”

The park is bordered by Route 85A, Hilton Road, and the Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail, which runs from Voorheesville to the Port of Albany. The trail is paved through the town of Bethlehem and the final leg, through New Scotland to the village of Voorheesville, is expected to be paved this year.

The town board’s goal is to reduce the hump on Hilton Road before the trail is set to be paved.

“We want to keep moving forward. It’s important to do it now,” said Councilwoman Patricia Snyder at Monday’s brief meeting. “It’s a safety issue.”

Hilton Road rises steeply and curves near where the rail trail crosses it, adjacent to the new park.

“It has to go down six feet,” said Supervisor Douglas LaGrange. He also said the federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires that a paved trail have an incline no steeper than 5 percent, and an unpaved trail have an incline no steeper than 3 percent.

Councilman William Hennessy who, along with Councilman Adam Greenberg, has been instrumental in moving the project forward, said an initial estimate for the work was “more extensive”; it was also far more costly.

The proposal presented by Barton & Loguidice includes $2,900 for labor, $2,100 for laboratory work, and $2,200 for a geoprobe — totalling $7,200. The company’s task order for the soil sample collection says it will “determine how most efficiently and cost effectively to handle subsurface soil that is disturbed by removal of the asphalt on the Hilton Road hump and the compacted fill on the immediately surrounded bike path.”

“Barton & Loguidice has been working on the Hilton barn and park site...They have a lot of environmental experience,” said Hennessy at the stand-up meeting, held in the clerk’s office at Town Hall.

LaGrange, Hennessy, Greenberg, and Snyder all voted in favor of  hiring Barton & Loguidice; Councilwoman Laura TenEyck wasn’t at the early-morning meeting.

“I met with the county,” said LaGrange.  “They will help with the grading.”

The hope is to be able to use the fill generated by lowering the hump to fill in steep ravines beside the trail; in that way, the road would be made safer as well as the trail.

After the meeting, Greenberg said that Massulo Brothers Builders, which is working on the 169-hme Kensington Woods development just down the road from the park, had offered to help with its heavy equipment. Greenberg also noted that the trail itself is county property and county workers may be involved in the project.

With three housing projects either underway or planned in the immediate area, Greenberg anticipates “a lot more traffic” on Hilton Road, making the leveling of the hump even more important.

He noted, too, there was much coordination to be done with a gas line, Sprint, and National Grid.

As Greenberg surveyed the site, he pointed out a portion of the rail trail right near the Hilton barn where, he said, if the ravine were filled in with the excess soil, “We might have an amphitheater there on a deck.”