By John Schwing

WESTPORT — A site for a new building to replace the deteriorating Parks and Recreation Department maintenance shed in Longshore Club Park remains out of sight after three months of debate, but seed money to start planning the facilities won Board of Finance support late Wednesday night.

A $238,000 request to fund a study that will analyze potential locations for a new maintenance building, as well as pay for schematic designs, was approved by a 5-1 vote of the finance board after an hour-and-a-half-long discussion punctuated by impassioned pleas and sharp exchanges.

The approval marked a reversal of fortune for the project, which in an earlier, site-specific version was rejected by the Board of Finance in January and the Planning and Zoning Commission in February.

Despite those rejections, there has been widespread agreement by members of both boards that the existing Longshore maintenance building, built in 1975, has deteriorated to the point that it poses a potential threat to the health and safety of parks and recreation workers, and is inadequate to store equipment and supplies.

The primary issues that caused the earlier $222,000 study to founder were the proposed relocation of the maintenance facilities within Longshore and the initially projected cost.

The appropriation for the revised study still must be approved by the Representative Town Meeting.

New park & rec director’s new pitch

On Wednesday, the funding request was presented by Erik Barbieri, the new director of the Parks and Recreation Department, in his debut appearance before the finance board.

Barbieri said there is a “dire need” to replace the maintenance building, and said he has set it as “a priority” in his new job.

Emphasizing that the revamped study is no longer site specific, he said part of the $238,000 would be used to conduct a needs assessment for a new maintenance facility, taking into account features such as the number of workers, storage capacity and mechanics’ area, to determine what size the structure should be. The funding would also pay for a schematic design to accommodate those facilities and survey town-owned properties where the building could potentially be located.

When finance board member Allyson Stollenwerck pointed out the proposal, as written, stated the survey would focus on properties 30,000 square feet in size at a minimum, she was told the search would not be that restrictive. The first plan had envisioned moving the building to a 35,000-square-foot site within an area used as a brush dump at Longshore.

The 30,000-square-foot figure, Barbieri said, is a “qualified placeholder” for purposes of the study, but not a firm number.

No site is locked in, officials say

Public Works Director Pete Ratkiewich, who in presenting the earlier plan said he felt the Longshore site was the only suitable town property for the new facilities, on Wednesday seconded Barbieri’s statement that the new study would not be tied to any one site.

He also noted that officials plan to focus only on town-owned properties because of the prohibitive cost of privately owned land in town.

Ratkiewich, as he had answered questions about the earlier plan, also said the $7 million listed in the Longshore Capital Improvement Plan as the possible cost of a new maintenance building is a “placeholder” estimated by the report’s consultant. “We’re going to try to make that number a lot smaller,” he said.

Finance Chair Lee Caney said he felt the study was revised to “tell us what we need in this particular shed, and based on what we need, we can figure out what are possible town properties that it can be located on.”

And a “real” probable cost also will be calculated, Barbieri added, saying he “would not use” figures cited in the earlier funding request.

A “bifurcated” study?

Board member Jeff Hammer called the proposal “an improvement” from the first version, but suggested the study be done in two parts, with the needs assessment for the facilities completed first. But because the issue of where to locate the building had become so controversial, he said, officials should hold off on the design and location until elements for the new facilities are determined.

Danielle Dobin, the board member who was most critical of the first proposal, agreed with Hammer on bifurcating the study.

She suggested more of the study could be done “internally” by town departments rather than hiring outside consultants, and felt that both private and state-owned properties — without being limited to a 30,000-square-foot minimum — should be considered as sites for the new building.

The object of the planning, she added, should be, “Let’s make it great, but let’s make it as small and spend as little money on it as possible.”

Dobin also cautioned against spending the full amount on a study that, in the end, might again be rejected by the P&Z.

Board member Liz Heyer, however, said the study should help resolve questions raised about the project by P&Z members, but town officials were unable to answer the first time around.

And Ratkiewich insisted the proposal before the board Wednesday — incorporating a needs analysis with schematic designs — is standard operating procedure for many of the town’s capital projects.

Questions trigger first selectwoman’s anger

Relocation of the maintenance building is the first project proposed under the umbrella of the $40 million Longshore Capital Improvement Plan. 

But when pressed by Dobin about whether it’s the “linchpin” before moving forward with other parts of the plan — such as a new golf clubhouse or renovating the park’s pools — Barbieri said new maintenance facilities need to be built first because of safety and accessibility requirements. “The building is falling apart,” he said, and should be replaced “right away.”

A visibly angered First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker came forward when Dobin asked Barbieri about the prospect of relocating the maintenance building to the Post Road East site of Fire Department headquarters, if a conceptual plan to build a combined public safety complex advances in the future.

“This is absolutely unbelievable,” Tooker said, to consider delaying new maintenance facilities for a site that might not be available for years. There is an immediate need to provide “safe and up-to-code” facilities for the parks maintenance staff, and further delays are “unacceptable,” she said.

“We need to get this building designed, we need to get a needs assessment done, we need to stop putting up barriers to getting this done … we have people working in unsafe conditions,” Tooker said. “We need to get this process off the ground.”

When Dobin asked how the building had been allowed to become so unsafe, Tooker retorted, “Please, Danielle, please, if that’s where this conversation is going to go, I’m just not going to go there.”

Tooker rejected suggestions to bifurcate the plan, or “change the process and change the goalposts, and say we need to get this done first before we get that done.”

“Stop!” she added. “We need to get this done.”

RTM members push hard for approval

Support to move the plan forward immediately was voiced by three Representative Town Meeting members.

“Not a single one of you” at Wednesday’s meeting would last one day working in the existing shed, said Andrew Colabella, District 4. He had submitted a petition asking the RTM to overturn the P&Z’s denial of the initial plan, but withdrew it before the issue came up for a vote.

The structure remains as unsound as it was in 2007 when he started working there, Colabella said. “Are our employees safe? No. Is that building dilapidated, aged and old? Yes. Does it meet their needs? No,” he said.

The proposal, he added, has become controversial “for no reason.”

Jimmy Izzo, District 3, told the financiers that the reason Colabella sought to have the RTM reverse the P&Z’s decision “is because you didn’t do your job. Your job is to approve and appropriate funding, your job is not to do, ‘Does it fit here, doesn’t it fit there.’ ”

The finance board had “kicked” the plan to the P&Z, which then had questions that Ratkiewich couldn’t completely answer without the study the financiers refused to fund, he said.

The “bottom line,” Izzo said, “is this has been a big circle jerk and I’m really disappointed about the way this has all gone tonight, and the way it went before and the way it went in front of P&Z.”

Chris Tait, the District 1 chairman of the RTM’s Parks and Recreation Committee, and David Floyd, chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission, also both urged approval of the appropriation.

Two zoners, two views

Neil Cohn, a P&Z member who voted to deny a positive 8-24 report for the plan, said the commission’s rejection was based primarily on the building’s proposed relocation within Longshore and not because a detailed study was unavailable for the project. “Incredibly detailed designs” for the building would not have changed the outcome, he said.

“It was the wrong location, the wrong use,” Cohn said, urging officials to “compromise” and look for “creative” alternatives.

Fellow P&Z Commissioner John Bolton, who was in the minority supporting the 8-24 report, called the situation “analysis paralysis.” 

He said he fails to understand why Ratkiewich and the staff recommendations on the plan have been called into question by both the P&Z and finance panel. And when the plan came before zoners, he added, “we had nothing to work with” since the finance board had refused to fund the request for schematic designs and other project details.

In the end, finance board members who initially had reservations about the revised maintenance proposal said officials’ assurances given during Wednesday’s discussion convinced them to vote in favor of the $238,000 appropriation.

That left Dobin as the lone vote against the funding request.

John Schwing, consulting editor of the Westport Journal, has held senior editorial and writing posts at southwestern Connecticut media outlets for four decades. Learn more about us here.