Public Works director: Independent engineers confirmed gravel buried beneath Cass Park is marketable
WOONSOCKET — Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino told the City Council Monday that soil borings conducted by independent engineers have confirmed what he already knew about Cass Park: There’s cash buried there.
Well, not cash exactly, but gravel, which can be sold to get some – enough, D’Agostino hopes, to pay for Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s proposed athletic complex at the site.
“We think we found a way – or, I think I found a way – where this project could possibly be funded with the material that’s there,” D’Agostino said during a Zoom meeting of the council. “That’s exciting. That’s a plus.”
D’Agostino’s update on mining gravel from Cass Park was the first time anyone from City Hall addressed the subject since Baldelli-Hunt announced the novel strategy for financing the athletic complex a few days before the November election, prompting her opponent to dismiss the news as a campaign stunt.
D’Agostino said he realizes “people want to be reassured” that the concept of selling gravel is sound, so the city went out to bid for an engineering firm to do some site work. The Pare Corporation of Lincoln was hired at a cost of $29,950 to produce a preliminary plan addressing storm water management, site grading and wetlands permitting on a roughly 7.75 acre portion of the site where the proposed football and track
components of the complex would be located, not far from Cass Pond.
As part of the contract, the city also commissioned Pare to conduct soil borings at depths ranging from 18 to 35 feet. The results showed that what’s under the dirt in Cass Park is “good quality” gravel, said D’Agostino.
“That’s good news, because it kind of confirms what I already know,” said the public works director, who has private sector experience in excavations and asphalt production. D’Agostino has said he first realized the city was sitting on substantial reserves of marketable gravel
when he uncovered the stuff while excavating a portion of Cass Park for the new softball field over a year ago.
“There’s an enormous amount of material there...roughly half a million yards,” D’Agostino said. “And that’s not counting what’s called the ‘fluff factor.’ Because gravel is dense, it’s in the ground, it’s compacted just by Mother Nature. Once you start aerating it and fluffing it up, you get more material, that number would grow.”
D’Agostino said he had an idea of
the market value of the material, but Council President Dan Gendron cut him off, saying the public disclosure of that information might hurt the city if it ever gets to the point of soliciting bids for the gravel.
While councilors praised D’Agostino for providing them with the update, they said that before making any decisions about moving the Cass Park project forward, they still need more details about the plan, which has driven a wedge between the administration and school officials. A core concept of the plan is to centralize high school field capacity – much of which is now at Barry Field – to Cass Park, but school officials say the latter doesn’t have enough usable space to warrant the abandonment of Barry Field.
D’Agostino assailed what he called “the narrative” about Cass Park’s purported shortcomings, dismissing it as “misinformation” and “totally not true.”
But when Gendron asked whether there is a comprehensive plan detailing all the amenities a completed Cass Park renovation, D’Agostino answered, “No.”
Likening the park renovation to building a home, Gendron said without a full plan, the city might risk “putting a bathroom where the living room should be,” especially if the project takes a number of years to complete.
D’Agostino said fine-tuning the plan would be a case of putting the cart before the financial horse. He said he wouldn’t push for developing
a more comprehensive and costlier plan until preliminary questions about feasibility, like those Pare is now addressing, are answered.
“The reality is we as a body...have never been presented
with anything but a rendering,” said Councilman James Cournoyer. “This is the first time from my perspective we’ve gotten anything of substance on this matter.”
But Cournoyer said before the council makes any firm decision on the path forward for Cass Park, a joint discussion of the proposal should be held that includes school officials, the council and the administration. Among other things, Cournoyer said the parties should address costs and funding mechanisms for the project, whether they involve selling gravel or using grants.
As the remote meeting was taking place, Gendron announced that he had received an email from the mayor asking for exactly such a meeting. After Gendron polled members about their availability, it’s now set for March 3.
Though D’Agostino’s briefing was intended to be preliminary, members of the council nevertheless pressed him for as much detail as possible about what a gravel-excavating operation might look like at Cass Park and how it could impact neighbors.
Councilman John Ward, for example, was curious to know whether trucks hauling gravel from Cass Park would be using narrow, housing-dense Newland Avenue as a means of egress. D’Agostino said the plan is for trucks to use Cass Avenue to get to and from the site – not Newland Avenue.
A timeline is still fuzzy, but D’Agostino said he would eventually go out to bid for a company to make an offerj on the gravel. The scale ofb the job would limit potential candidates to comparatively few excavation companies with equipment suitable for handling a commercial-size operation.