Future hopes for the McKenzie Property include the continued and expanded use by the public for recreational activities including cross-country skiing, walking, hiking, and jogging while preserving the general structure and ecological health of the site. In addition to this, the city of Burlington hopes to procure sufficient funding to survey the site and another of similar ecological importance so as to transfer federal restrictions placed on site use to said new site. This transferring of federal restrictions attained through the use of federal LWCA grant money to purchase the McKenzie Property would allow the practice of commercial agriculture on the site. It is the hope of the city that eliminating such restrictions would provide economic benefits to the city while encouraging community-centered agriculture on a historically important and productive agricultural site.
In the shorter term, however, our research has provided Burlington Parks and Recreation with a very user-friendly 803.09-foot long rerouted trail through the woods at the McKenzie Property that will allow people to use the trail year-round and not have to worry about another catastrophic weather event destroying the trail system. With the increase in severe storms because of Global Warming, many trails will have to be rerouted in the coming years. To accomplish this task, Dan Cahill from Burlington Parks and Recreation has enlisted the help of the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, a non-profit from Richmond, Vermont that helps give youths job experience and teach them about personal responsibility while constructing and maintaining some of Vermont's most beautiful trails.
