Long Lots Building Committee meeting on Thursday night. / Photos by Thane Grauel

By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — The Long Lots School Building Committee had hoped to make a recommendation by the end of the summer on whether the 70-plus-year-old elementary school should be renovated, expanded or replaced.

But committee Chairman Jay Keenan, also a Representative Town Meeting member from District 2, made it clear at a Thursday meeting that revisions to potential site plans, financial projections and other matters still are weeks away.

And, as has been said before, whatever recommendation the committee makes might not be as clear-cut as renovate in place, renovate with additions, or build a whole new school.

Keeping the existing structure sounds unlikely.

“The building is in a state where we’d have to spend a lot of money to keep that building going, with mechanicals and everything,” Keenan said. “It’s just not worth it.” 

That pretty much leaves a whole new school the likeliest option.

The committee continued looking at potential site plans, seven or so, Thursday. 

Another standing-room-only meeting.
Another standing-room-only meeting.

The meeting once again took place in a conference room too small for the crowd, while the Town Hall auditorium — which rarely gets such a turnout for a board or commission meeting — sat dark and silent.

In addition to the committee and consultants at the table, more than 40 members of the public, including elected and appointed officials from other town bodies, filled all the available seats and others were left standing, in and outside Room 201.

“I’m sure everybody’s going to be a little irritated with this in the end, and hopefully, when we’re all done two-and-a-half years from now, we’ll have a great project that everybody’s happy with,” Keenan said.

Much of the crowd, once again, were members of the Westport Community Gardens.

They’ve been fighting to keep the gardens in place because more than 100 families have been working the soil and planting perennials over the years.

Committee member Don O’Day, RTM District 2, said he understood the gardeners’ efforts over 20 years.

“I get that,” he said. “But I’m also thinking in a more Gestalt way, that we’ve got to do stuff that we are doing.”

Access to the gardens, should they be left in place, would be shut down for the duration of construction, because it would be a construction zone, perhaps a growing season or two, O’Day said.

“I’m also thinking in a more Gestalt way, that we’ve got to do stuff that we are doing.”
Don O’Day

Toni Simonetti, an advocate for the gardens, spoke to the committee as the meeting was breaking up. She told Keenan he was in a pickle.

“I don’t envy you,” she said. “Raze those gardens and we’re all gonna disappear. And that could very well, likely happen. But it doesn’t change the status that people care about these gardens and they don’t want to lose them in their current space.”

“That’s never going to change,” Simonetti said.

Keenan said he’d make the best recommendation he could to the deciding bodies.

“Raze those gardens and we’re all gonna disappear. And that could very well, likely happen. But it doesn’t change the status that people care about these gardens and they don’t want to lose them in their current space.”
Toni Simonetti

Simonetti said after the meeting that she fears a ball field would trump the 20-year history of the community gardens off Hyde Lane.

Thane Grauel grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond for 35 years. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.