Allow for more public input on stadium
I have been trying to trace the public trail of how a simple project to replace outdated bleachers at Cardinal Stadium in 2018 morphed into a plan to essentially build a new $12 million stadium. It is no simple task.
I have gone back through minutes of multiple Board of Education meetings, and sifted through information many clicks deep in the Greenwich Public Schools website.
And, perhaps most painfully, I Zoomed the five-plus hours of the Planning and Zoning Commission
public hearing last Tuesday night on a proposed zoning change for Greenwich High School.
It was instructive to hear the different parties’ takes on whether the two-year journey from bleachers to athletic complex had been sufficiently solicitous of public input.
Planning and Zoning Commission Chair Margarita Alban said she had been inundated with emails from neighbors of GHS and other people concerned about the impact of changing zoning regulations that restricted building at GHS. “I stopped counting how many there were,” she said.
Thomas Heagney, the lawyer advocating for the stadium redevelopment and himself a former member of both the school board and the planning commission, said the public had had ample opportunity to discuss the plans at any one of many public meetings since early 2018. The new Cardinal Stadium plan had “been fully vetted as much as anything can be vetted.”
“There is a very different perception about why you (and the school board) are in front of us seeking an MI right now,” Alban said. For those who don’t speak zoning or public building procedure, before any substantial project can go forward, the P&Z must designate for it a Municipal Improvement status, meaning it is consistent with zoning regulations and the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development.
Board of Education member Joseph Kelly, a former coach for the GHS rugby team and the board’s liaison to the stadium committee, said, “The Board of Education has received no emails” about the project. Though he added that it could have generated many supportive emails, but he did not “think it was fair to swamp the commission.”
Then came the “public” comments. One after another, GHS neighbors spoke through their iPads or computers listing the many reasons that such a dramatic change to the GHS campus required a more inclusive process.
They spoke of a “rushed” project. They listed the many other GHS additions and improvements (science wing, new auditorium, outlying playing fields) that had turned out much different than what they thought had been approved. And they talked about what it is like to live next to one of the biggest high schools in Connecticut.
That last point is important. It is often said that people who choose to live next to a school should expect a certain level of activity and traffic. After all, kids gotta play. GHS neighbors agreed, but one concisely expressed their point of view: “I chose to live next to a school, but not next to Chelsea Piers.”
The town generates revenue by renting out GHS playing fields when they are not in use by the school. “We wake up Sunday mornings to the blare of loudspeakers,” one neighbor said. Another said, “A men’s soccer league plays at all hours on the fields behind us.”
All the GHS neighbors who spoke Tuesday night indicated support for “the bleachers project” but also were sharply critical of the “rush” process.
How does one square the school board’s lawyer’s statement that multiple public hearings were held with the neighbors testifying that the “school board never spoke to us”?
A partial answer is found on the town schools’ website. Several layers in, one finds a page headed “Greenwich Cardinal Field Improvement Project.” This page offers an illuminating history of the last two-and-a-half years.
The first public meeting in this convoluted process was held at noon Dec. 22, 2017 smack in the middle of the holiday season. After that meeting, the “feasibility study” was discussed at a 3 p.m. meeting on Jan. 18, 2018, and a 7 p.m. meeting on Feb. 7, 2018.
After those meetings, the Cardinal Field Steering Committee was formed, presumably by the school board. It had 14 members, all but one either a school administrator, a PTA officer or a town official.
This group did meet about “Project Big Red” on 10 different occasions between May 22, 2018, and Aug. 22, 2019. There were 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. meetings, there was a noon meeting, and there were many early afternoon meetings, but there was only one meeting at night, and that was the very first one.
This record allowed Heagney to accurately state that there were multiple meetings at which the public could comment. But scheduling them on random days at inconvenient hours did not help public awareness.
In the end, the Planning and Zoning Commission decided not to take up the school board’s request for a zoning change over the stadium project; instead, it directed the school board to seek a variance that would relieve it of the burden of complying with its current zone regulations.
The “bleachers project” has been delayed, but it is not in jeopardy. But perhaps now the public will get a better chance to comment. After all, the school board wants to essentially rebuild the stadium. Replacing the bleachers now means building new bleachers on both sides of the field, erecting team buildings under the seats, adding an elevator, a press box, public restrooms, moving tennis courts to make way for new parking lots compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a food court, and a new traffic configuration that would convert the existing emergency vehicle access on East Putnam Avenue to a general use intersection with a traffic light.
Is a new stadium needed? It certainly is if you compare it to other facilities at other high schools. Few people would argue with that. But the changes proposed to the GHS campus would impact everyone in town, and the general public should be given its proper place in the public conversation.