Mystic park, 5 years on

Here’s to persistence. In 2016, voters approved borrowing $2.2 million to acquire land on the Mystic River and convert it to a small public park adjacent to the Mystic Seaport Museum. It was to also serve as the location of a boathouse, developed with the help of private funds, to support rowing activities and the popular Stonington High School rowing program.

Unfortunately, the prior administration, under then-First Selectman Rob Simmons, badly miscalculated the true costs of creating Mystic River Boathouse Park. The challenges were far more extensive than advertised and the funding insufficient.

A house on the property was simply going to be razed, but then the State Historic Preservation Office judged it to be historic and ordered its preservation. The new plans call for it to be moved and incorporated into the planned boathouse.

The amount of underground contamination and the need to remediate it was more extensive than anticipated.

The original, modernistic design of the boathouse was widely criticized, forcing the architects to, literally, go back to the drawing board. Outside of that, everything went smoothly. Elected in 2019, First Selectwoman Danielle Chesebrough has sought to get the project back in gear, with some recent success. Yet uncertainties remain and completion is likely years, not months, away.

With about $550,000 left of the original funding, Stonington is seeking a nearly $1 million state grant to finish the environmental cleanup. A prior $200,000 state grant was used to pay for an assessment of the pollution, and $50,000 remains.

The Friends of Stonington Crew, which also deserves credit for persisting, has formed the nonprofit Stonington Community Rowing Foundation, which will allow it to fundraise for the project and manage the boathouse when completed. Or is that if?

A memorandum of understanding between the town and the rowing foundation delineates who handles what in the development of the park and the operation of the boathouse.

We remain convinced this can become an important public asset. We backed the project in 2016 and urged voter approval. Would we have done so knowing the investment would be roughly double the amount initially sought? Perhaps not. But the current administration and the project’s supporters have plans in place to complete it without returning to voters for more money.

The oars are in the water, so complete the race, even if the course is far longer than expected.