Montgomery County community pleads with officials to keep beloved stables from closing
SILVER SPRING, Md. (FOX 5 DC) - Save the horses and the barn they live in--that’s the idea behind a community lead effort at Wheaton Park Stables in Silver Spring which could close due to aging infrastructure.
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"There’s not a lot of places that accept these guys and what they can do, sorry," said Rebecca Roe fighting back tears on Friday.
Roe is a program director with Cura Personalis at the stables.
She chokes up whenever she says, she thinks about what could happen if the horse barn at were to shut down.
"You see them grow, going from nervous and timid to confident," said Roe while talking about the many adults and young kids with special needs she gets to work with at the stables.
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The facility not only provides daily pay for riding lessons to anyone in the community but also horse therapy and simple tasks for her group to do around the barn.
"It’s a place that they own and to take that away would just be heartbreaking for them," said Roe.
The barn’s owner, Sandra Creecy said the facility could shut down because the county says it’s now 60-years-old and needs a lot of renovations which would require a ton of money.
"Anything will cost money but again, it’s such a historic building that has so much history in it and what’s it done to help different people in different areas for so many different reasons," said Creecy.
There’s currently a local online petition going around the county with hundreds of signatures already collected to keep the barn from closing.
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Officials with county parks said, they aren’t sure yet about what will happen with the barn itself but they don’t want anyone panicking.
"All we are saying in the park master plan is that at some point in the future we may need to think of another use for the land or add something else to the land," said Chuck Kines park planner with the Montgomery County Department of Parks.
Kines added that no final decisions have been made but that there is a draft plan, being currently written which will be presented to the Montgomery County Planning Board sometime this winter, probably in January.