By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — A Planning and Zoning Commission discussion this week about a plan to create indoor recreation space off upper Main Street made two things clear.

First, the town needs such facilities, especially to accommodate girls’ sports, including lacrosse. Sports parents often have to drive to Norwalk and beyond from the fall to spring.

Second, the site in question, behind 345 Main St., poses parking and traffic challenges. Several commission members said as much.

Landtech and Scott Maronna requested a pre-application hearing with the commission to discuss the plan for an indoor recreational facility at 345 Main. That’s behind the row of businesses that houses Coffee An’, Merritt Country Store, Outpost Pizza and Cloud Nine Consignments.

A pre-application hearing is an opportunity for a potential applicant to get feedback on a plan without a formal vote by the commission. The discussion is non-binding.

The site in question is behind a shopping plaza began life about 1940 as an automobile service center. Additions and other businesses followed. The rear of the property, bordered by a leg of the Saugatuck River, hosts an electrical substation and a cinder-block structure that’s been used for storage.

That structure would be razed and replaced by an 8,000-square-foot recreational facility.

Maronna said at the Monday hearing that he is a girls lacrosse coach for third- and fourth-graders, and that he started a girls lacrosse club called the Westport Vikings.

“We have a major indoor bottleneck of space available to us,” Maronna said. “Not only for lacrosse, but also for football, for soccer, lacrosse boys and girls, baseball, and a number of sports in town that need indoor space.”

He said the owner of the property is a friend whose children also are athletes.

“We kind of came together on this and came up with this idea of using this dilapidated area in the back of this property and creating Westport Indoor, which would be a turf field that would be heated and cooled and have a couple of bathrooms in it.”

He said parents now have to shuttle their kids to Norwalk, Trumbull or Fairfield for practice in the cold-weather months.

Commission member Michael Cammeyer, a sports coach, talked about the parking problems with similar facilities in other towns.

“Yeah, we need it, and Parks and Rec needs it and the soccer program needs it, and lacrosse … that’s not even in question I totally agree,” he said.

But he was stuck on parking capacity, and doubted young athletes would just be dropped off and picked up at the Main Street facility.

He asked, what parent doesn’t want to watch their child play?

“Love the idea, hate the location,” Cammeyer said.

“Parking will be a nightmare there,” member Amie Tesler said.

Member Paul Lebowitz had neighborhood concerns, since the property is located in a split zone.

“You cannot subject residential neighbors to this type of intensification,” he said. “They would go ballistic.”

Commission Chairwoman Danielle Dobin had some encouraging words for the plan, and pointed comments about how girls’ sports are treated.

“I love the idea because there’s truly a disparity in this town … I think that a lot of the parents of girls perceive that there’s a disparity in terms of access to turf fields, especially lit fields, for the girls’ teams as opposed to the boys’ teams.”

“I love the idea of somebody trying to address that disparity by creating additional turf fields and additional indoor fields,” Dobin said.

Dobin, however, agreed with fellow commission members that parking would be a concern for the proposal.

“I think if you can really drill down on how small a space would work for you, as a reasonable indoor practice space, and if there could be restrictions on hours of use … I think that there could be, despite everything negative you’ve heard, a way forward I just think it needs to look really different than what’s been presented,” she said.

Thane Grauel, executive editor, 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.