In adopting its first-ever master plan, the Village of Lynchburg has endorsed the plan’s recommendation to build on an existing strength of the town — parks.

Connecting parkgrounds would “dramatically enhance” the residents’ quality of life and would be “a major selling point” to attract new residents, according to the master plan document.

The document is authored by the Clinton County Regional Planning Commission executive director and a consultant from the University of Cincinnati School of Planning. Fourteen Lynchburg citizens contributed to the process by participating in a survey during an open house.

On the prospect of making attractive and unifying connections among the park spaces, Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Chris Schock and consultant David Alpern wrote, “It is safe to say no other community in the immediate region has any type of network even remotely similar to this proposal.”

The two community planners believe the park and open space areas are “crucial” to the long-term soundness of Lynchburg.

Parks, they note, add significantly to property values, but even more importantly, parks foster physical and emotional well-being among their users.

“While these areas require a public investment in construction and maintenance, the return is substantial,” Schock and Alpern wrote.

The project to be pursued involves appropriately expanding park facilities and connecting them, they wrote.

Crampton Park is an existing park in town. The planners suggest an open layout, a picnic shelter, barbecues, a playground and “possibly a band shelter or stage to complement the covered bridge at the north end of the park.”

East of Crampton Park is a park where a school building once stood. And south of this parkland, between Washington and Jackson streets, is vacant property which the planners propose be utilized as plots for community gardens.

Then, taking Washington Street east, the document advises placing a new park.

An interconnected parks network could even help unify the town “into one coherent social unit,” the planners suggest.

In summarizing results from the citizens’ open house, the document notes, among other things, that neither community size nor a slow-paced lifestyle is seen as a problem facing the community.

A Main Street wish list proved to have a common theme among survey participants. Ten of the 14 respondents want a “grocery.” Two other responses are components of a grocery — a bakery, and a meat market plus produce. The other two respondents also had food on their Main Street list: a sports grill and a place for women to gather over tea and pie.

There are just under 1,500 people who reside in Lynchburg. Part of the town is within southern Clinton County.

In Alpern’s introduction, he wrote, “By the end of the initial physical analysis of Lynchburg, it had become rather apparent the town had good bones, but the flesh had fallen away.” Alpern resided in the village for two months earlier this year to help him prepare the master plan document.

In the land-use section of the document, the planners wrote, “Given the town history over the last four decades, Lynchburg has become more and more of a bedroom community.”

Alpern wrote the parks and Main Street are two physical aspects of Lynchburg that can easily be influenced by the village itself.

Schock said in an e-mail to the Wilmington News Journal the Lynchburg master plan document offers “something to really imagine what the village could be like and a vision to work toward.”

The Village of Lynchburg has applied for a NatureWorks grant in hopes of getting funds to improve the parkland in the vicinity of the covered bridge and stream.

If someone wants to read the entire plan, it can be downloaded from the Clinton County Regional Planning Commission’s Web site at www.clintoncountyrpc.org.