Along with Robbinsville Township, two Mercer County organizations received PlanSmart NJ Awards.
Eleanor Horne, of Lawrence, and Becky Taylor, of Hopewell Township, were honored for their work with the Lawrence Hopewell Trail, and Linda Mead from D&R Greenway won the Environmental Achievement Award.
Richard Johnson, of the Matrix Development Group, presented the Regional and Community Planning Award,PlanSmart NJ’s oldest award, Horne and Taylor.
The women have successful completed a 20-mile trail within two townships that connects to the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000 mile network of community trails ranging from Maine to Florida.
Mead received the Environmental Achievement Award for D&R Greenway’s regional planning approach to land preservation.
D&R Greenway was co-founded by PlanSmart NJ, then known as MSM, in 1989.
Under Mead’s leadership, the D&R Greenway has preserved close to 15,000 acres, for a total of 17,335 acres since its founding. Many of those acres are in Hopewell Valley – including the St. Michael’s Preserve, just outside of Hopewell Borough.
Horne, Taylor and Mead were honored at PlanSmart NJ’s annual dinner Nov. 14. The organization is celebrating its 45th anniversary as an independent, nonprofit civic planning and research organization committed to “better land use, better lives.”
