Bald Mountain Park Supervisor Discusses New Position, Goals

The idea of working indoors 40 hours a week may be enticing to some people, but not to Andrew Cole.

Cole, the new park supervisor at Bald Mountain Recreation Area, has always enjoyed the outdoors and said that having to work indoors would make him stir-crazy. For Cole, getting hired at Bald Mountain is an exciting new step in his career. With more than 4,500 acres of land, he has plenty of area to roam to keep him busy outdoors. The Flint resident was hired at the beginning of the year and already has plans for tweaking areas of the park and enhancing park programs.

Patch sat down with Cole and asked him questions about his new position, including what changes he has in mind for the state park. Here is what he had to say:

Oakland Township Patch: How long have you worked in the parks system?

Andrew Cole: I started in parks in 1999 as just a summer worker when I was going through college. I was hired as a park ranger at Seven Lakes State Park in 2001, and I was a ranger there and at Highland Recreation Area until 2010. Then I got a chance to work as a supervisor at Maybury State Park, did that for a year, and then was hired at Dodge No. 4 State Park last May and worked there until I was started here.

Patch: Why did you make the move here?

Cole: It was a much bigger park. Dodge was only 130 acres ... a bigger park I viewed as a challenge. I wanted to hone my supervisor skills, and I thought this would be a really good place to do it.

Patch: What's your favorite part about managing a park?

Cole: Just being outdoors — every aspect of it. And you get to meet new people every day.

Patch: What are your hobbies?

Cole: I love being outdoors. Anytime I can get out and go hunting or fishing, I do. I really want to start getting my kids outdoors. I think I’ve got them hooked into fishing already.

Patch: Is there anything you plan to do differently here?

Cole: Right now, we're working on a management plan for the park, and that will hopefully lay out some partnerships that we can have with other parks. … A long-term vision is to provide a trail system that can connect from Addison Oaks all the way across to Orion Oaks. I would like to upgrade some of our buildings here in the park. The park system has old infrastructures, the roads are crumbling. … A lot of the buildings were built in the '20s, '30s and '40s.

Patch: Now that you are park supervisor, what are your goals?

Cole: My goals are to provide the best recreational opportunities we can while still protecting our natural resources here in the park and providing a safe place that people can come and enjoy the outdoors. Our big focus right now in parks is educational opportunities. We have what we call Recreation 101 events occasionally, which are basically like simple courses where we take an idea — for example, fishing — and take kids who know nothing about fishing, and we get someone to come in and teach them how to do it.

Patch: Are there any other types of programming you think would benefit the park?

Cole: This is a great area for educational opportunities because we have such a variety of different things here. State parks have the explorer guide program, and what that is is people are hired specifically to do educational programming. They come up with different programs ... and lead them daily. My long-term goal is to have an explorer guide here. Another goal of mine is to really try to partner with different businesses in the community. I know that those (relationships) can be very helpful.

Patch: What are your plans for the park manager house on Predmore Road?

Cole: That we are going to renovate, and we are probably going to turn that into a modern lodge and rent it out. We have two rustic cabins right now, too, that sleep 20 people each, and all that’s in them are wood burning stoves. Long-term goals are to at least get some electricity in those cabins, but the Predmore house will be fully modernized — it is going to have a furnace and indoor plumbing. There are two fireplaces in there, so we will be looking at getting those up and running.

Patch: When will the renovations be made?

Cole: That’s going to definitely depend on funding. For state parks as a whole, our funding is getting better. The Recreational Passport was successful in the first year, and we’re going to try and improve on that this year. So the more that we can promote that and get people to participate, the more money parks will get, and the more money parks get, the more we can do with our buildings and our infrastructures and improve those facilities.

Patch: Is there anything in your mind that stands out about this park in comparison to others?

Cole: Every park is unique. ... One of our purposes of doing the Bald Mountain management plan is to try and develop an identity for this park. You know we have the trails, we have the shooting range, we have a small beach, we have the cabins … but it really doesn’t have a firm identity. That’s kind of what we’re looking into finding out — what can this park offer that would be unique from other county parks? From other state parks?