Next to all of the commercial hubbub along Route 302 in North Windham, between Home Depot and Anglers Road, there is a remarkable 120 acres of undeveloped land. At 6:30 p.m. Jan. 31, Windham will hold a public meeting at the Town Hall Council Chambers where residents can propose ideas for creating a multi-use outdoor recreational park.

Access to the parcel, formally known as the Chaffin Pond Preserve, is located right next to the Sherwin-Williams paint store on Route 302. Despite its proximity to retailers, the land has remained an oasis and development-free for years. There are no camps along Chaffin’s shores.

“We want to draft a master plan with input from the public,” said Brian Ross, Windham parks and recreation director. “Currently there’s a hiking trail that goes around the pond. Ideally it will be a community park to include many interests, not just hiking and fishing.”

Ross said the meeting will begin with a short presentation that will include an overview of the parcel, followed by the chance for residents to speak.

The Portland Water District owned the land from 1937 to 2010 and wells on the parcel were once the drinking water supply for North Windham. With the parcel no longer of use to the district, the land was leased to the town of Windham, which ultimately purchased it for $385,000 last March with goals of using the land and its nine-acre pond as a park.

Phil Kennard, a lifelong Windham resident who grew up along White’s Bridge Road not far from Chaffin Pond. When he was six years old in the mid-1920s, Kennard remembers walking past the pond’s outlet near the paint store on his way to grammar school.

“I walked from the White’s Bridge Road to school at North Windham,” he recalls, “On the easterly side of the road (now 302) the outlet of Chaffin Pond looked much as it does today. On the eastern side of the main road was a short narrow dirt road which ran parallel to it and was used by teamsters to water their thirsty horses.”

This brook is named Sucker Brook. Every spring Kennard remembers the neighborhood youth gathering with flashlights and homemade spears to fish suckers during the annual spawning run from Sebago Lake Basin to Chaffin Pond. However, this brook is but a trickle today. Years ago, Chaffin Pond was part of the outlet for Little Sebago Lake. Today Little Sebago drains into the Pleasant River via Ditch Brook, which passes under Varney Mill Road a few miles south of Route 302’s main commercial center.

Some 20 feet lower today, local historians know that the natural level of Little Sebago used to be much higher. Back in the early 1800s, a mill owner caused a disaster that made Little Sebago drop, exposing many of its islands. Some of Little Sebago continued to flow westward down Sucker Brook.

Around 1970, things changed even further when Route 302 was upgraded. Two culverts intended to carry Sucker Brook under the road were placed a little too high. Now, the only flow through Sucker Brook is what drains from its banks or during a flood.

Today, both Chaffin Pond and Pettengill Pond located immediately upstream, are considered stagnant. Because of this, Ross said there can be problems with water backing up from Chaffin to the rear of the parcel, making the area swampy.

“It would be nice to figure out how to alleviate some of that,” Ross said.

Many who live along Little Sebago’s shore realize the lake level can get high in the springtime. The dam keeper on Little Sebago is somewhat stymied, however, since he must slowly release water so that downstream areas along Collins Pond are not swamped. Perhaps with the restoration of the outlet to Chaffin via Sucker Brook some of that issue might be relieved.

Whatever transpires, Ross said the meeting will be one of at least two public hearings about the new park, which will be named the Donnabeth Lippman Park in honor of the wife of benefactor and Standish resident Martin Lippman, who in a whole other story, decided to reimburse the town of Windham’s purchase price for the parcel.

For more on the public hearing, contact Windham Park and Recreation at 892-1905.

Don Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Raymond. He can be reached at: presswriter@gmail.com

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Correction: This story was revised at 11:28 a.m., Jan. 23, 2012, to state that the natural level of Little Sebago is 20 feet lower today, and local historians know that it used to be much higher.