Eastern Greenwich Civic Center plans challenged
Athletic foundation members want field house, turf field added
GREENWICH — Seven residents are challenging the plans for a new Eastern Greenwich Civic Center and demanding the addition of field house with an artificial turf field — a move that could send the long-anticipated project back to the drawing board.
The residents, who are all members of the Greenwich Athletic Foundation’s executive board, have filed a referral that will be heard by the Representative Town Meeting on Jan. 19.
“While the GAF understands the importance of this project to the community and the many programs facilitated at the site, the proposed plan for improvements to the
building fall short of meeting the current and future needs of residents,” they said in the referral. “The preliminary plan, as submitted, does nothing more than replace what currently (exists) on site.”
The opportunity to improve a town-owned facility is “a unique privilege that must not be compromised” and “the ability to do more with the EGCC site is evident,” they said.
The group is asking for the town to reconsider the project’s municipal improvement status, which is conferred by the Planning and Zoning Commission and allows a project to move forward with its final design plan.
If the RTM votes to pull MI status, town Director of Planning and Zoning Katie DeLuca said the project would have to be revised. A new plan would then be submitted to the Board of Selectmen and then sent back to the P&Z Commission for another review to regain MI status.
This “would sink the project,” said Gary Dell’Abate, co-chair of the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center Committee.
“This would be devastating to the project and would be devastating to the town,” Dell’Abate said. “The work that has been put in for the last three years would be over. We’d have to go back and start at square one.”
Rick Kral, co-president of the GAF, said Monday that the addition of a field house with an artificial turf field, would not cause that big of a disruption.
“I don’t believe this would delay the project a year,” Kral said. “It’s very specific what we feel should be added to the project. ... This doesn’t need to delay the project more than a month or two if done properly.”
Estimates for the current plan carry a price tag of about $15 million; a version with a field house would cost about $22 million or more.
Current plans
The current plan calls for tearing down the two-story 31,765square-foot civic center, which was built in 1950.
The new one-story building would have 35,418 square feet of space and would include a fullsize multi-use gymnasium with rollout spectator seating; 8,100 square feet of multi-use event space; and three 1,000-squarefoot activity rooms, two of which would share a partition that could be opened to create a larger space.
The plans were developed after nearly three years of public meetings as the committee balanced the need for sports facilities with the wishes of community member for plentiful space for meetings and for activities other than sports.
The committee went ahead with plans that did not include additional playing fields or a field house for several reasons, Dell’Abate said. The cost for construction and maintenance was a factor, he said, as well as the difficulty of constructing a building of that size.
In the committee’s discussions with with the RTM and the community, “there wasn’t a huge appetite” for a field house, which led the committee to question whether it was needed, he said.
“You can’t just start building enormous structures all over town,” Dell’Abate said. “You also have to make sure you have enough parking. There’s drainage to worry about. The field house was an enormous expense we did not have a budget for.”
Scarcity of fields
But Kral said the addition of the field house would address the scarcity of public playing fields in town. Many residents are forced to drive to Chelsea Piers in Stamford or rent fields from the private schools, he said.
An indoor turf field could be used for all town programs, he said, including baseball, football, lacrosse, field hockey, soccer, gymnastics, cheerleading and more.
“We want the ability to have an indoor turf field house,” Kral said. “One of the priorities in the last Plan of Conservation and Development was that we need additional playing fields and playing surfaces for recreational purposes. ...
“When we have an opportunity to have an indoor field that can facilitate programs all year round, even during inclement weather, you should take it,” he said.
Kral said that adding $7 million to the project’s cost would be “a lot of money.”
“But in the grand scheme of things, it really is an inexpensive solution” to the field shortage, he said. “(But) we haven’t looked at what the ability to generate revenue from that kind of a facility will be.”
The GAF would do private fundraising to help support the project, he said.
“If we were given that opportunity, I believe we would be able to get some funding to offset the cost to the taxpayers,” Kral said.
But Dell’Abate estimated that the cost for a field house addition could be higher than $7 million and perhaps as much as $10 million more. He questioned the ability to fund-raise that amount of money.
First Selectman Fred Camillo is slated to unveil his proposed 2021-22 municipal budget on Jan. 26, which could include more money for the Eastern Civic Center project.
This week, the RTM’s Land Use, Finance, Parks and Recreation, Legislative and Rules and Public Works committees will review the referral. All the committees are expected to offer recommendations on its merits to the full RTM on Jan. 19.
Members of the GAF and the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center Committee will make presentations to the RTM committees and the full RTM before any vote is taken.