Parks and Recreation Commission members, from left, Chrissy O’Keeffe, Chairman David Floyd and Alec Stevens, meeting in Town Hall on Monday, approved the Long Longs School Building Committee’s plan to construct a new school on the Hyde Lane property and place an athletic field where the Westport Community Gardens now stand. / Photos by Gretchen Webster
Long Lots ballfields vs. gardens debate: Speakers at the commission meeting had different views about the issue of whether the Long Lots school project should make room for a new athletic field or retain the Westport Community Gardens. They included, from left, Kristin Schneeman, a Representative Town Meeting member from District 9; Jim Wolf, president of the Westport Soccer Association, and Irmgard Gwilliam, a community gardener.

By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — The Parks and Recreation Commission voted Monday to move the Westport Community Gardens off the Long Lots Elementary School property to make way for an athletic field, despite hearing options that might save the gardens and permit construction of the field.

The commission will choose a site to move the gardens “at a location to be determined” at a future meeting, the panel said in its resolution.

The parks and recreation vote came in the wake of the recent recommendation by the Long Lots School Building Committee, later endorsed by First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker, to construct a new elementary school on the Hyde Lane property, along with a larger athletic field that would supplant the two-decade-old gardens. Under that scenario, the community gardens would be relocated to the town-owned Baron’s South property.

John Suggs, of the Westport Preservation Alliance and a District 9 RTM candidate, brought to Monday’s meeting large photos of what he said is contaminated fill dumped on the Baron’s South site where officials have recommended the community gardens be moved.

Alternatives to the recommended plan for moving the gardens, presented at the meeting by members of the public, included:

  • Move the weekly Westport Farmers Market from the town’s Imperial Avenue parking lot to a beach or church parking lot and build a new athletic field there.
  • Put the athletic field where the existing Long Lots building now stands, once it is demolished after the new school is completed.
  • Construct additional athletic fields in Winslow Park or at Hendricks Point on the Longshore Club Park property.

In the end, however, the three members of the commission present for the vote, approved the building committee’s plan to construct the new school on the site of an existing baseball field on the Hyde Lane property and to build a new field where the gardens are located.

The decision to “move” the gardens, the gardeners and their supporters have argued for months, effectively destroys them.

“If we lose [an athletic] field it’s gone … by eliminating a multi-purpose field I think we’re sending a message to all the citizens and, most importantly, children, that recreation and physical activity are not important to this town,” commission Chairman David Floyd said before the vote.

“I also believe that with our affirmation and our support we can find a more suitable location for the community gardens,” he added.

High demand for athletic fields

Several representatives of athletic organizations and leagues spoke about the difficulty of scheduling use of athletic fields and the poor condition of some town fields because of repeated use. 

“The issue of overuse has become a big problem,” said Jim Wolf, president of the Westport Soccer Association. When fields are not allowed to rest between use, “they turn into mud pits. They are unsafe … soccer is a sport everyone plays,” he said.

A list of alternative sites to relocate the Long Lots athletic field and the gardens, issued in September by Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Fava, also was reviewed at the meeting. Other possible locations considered for an athletic field included the Lillian Wadsworth Arboretum on Woodside Lane and Winslow Park, while alternate sites for the gardens, it said, could be Baron’s South, Winslow Park, Riverside Park and the Wadsworth Arboretum.

But “there’s really no other locations that are appropriate to build new fields,” Fava told the commission. “No one is supporting elimination of the garden, but removing the [Long Lots] field” would result in one less athletic field in a town already short on fields.

Commission asked to wait on garden recommendation

Many of the speakers at the meeting said they would like the commission to split its decision on the issue —immediately approving construction of the new school as the Long Lots Building Committee recommended, but taking more time to sort out whether the gardens or the athletic field should remain on Hyde Lane. 

They called it a “win-win situation” to find another location for the athletic field in order to preserve the gardens. 

Kristin Schneeman, a Representative Town Meeting member from District 9, was among those asking the commission to take more time to consider alternative solutions and to postpone Wednesday’s vote. “It feels like there’s a lot of catch-up going on,” she said. “It’s like Parker Harding [parking lot redesign]. We don’t have a holistic view.”

The latest plan to revamp that downtown parking lot, another recent controversial issue, earlier Monday was pulled from consideration by the Planning and Zoning Commission after it got a skeptical review by the P&Z last week.

Parks and Recreation Commission members present for Monday’s meeting — Floyd, Chrissy O’Keeffe and Alec Stevens — seemed to be leaning toward splitting their vote into two sessions to gather more input as several speakers suggested, until Jay Keenan, chairman of the Long Lots committee, said that postponing any part of the plan while more options were investigated would only delay the project and ultimately cost the town more.

Discussion turns emotional

The meeting got emotional at times when both the gardeners and school parents spoke. 

Gardener Irmgard Gwilliam told the commission that she and her husband felt that older people were being ignored in Westport.

“We’re all talking about the children here,” she said. “No one is talking for us and for our garden. Who is talking about older people who get such pleasure out of the gardens?”

Tara McCarthy, of Clapboard Hill Road, said the tension between the gardeners and the proponents of more athletic fields is creating “a sad discussion. It feels like a war and we’re losing the battle,” she said.

Long Lots parents said a new building to replace the 70-year-old school — which has the largest enrollment of the town’s elementary schools — is desperately needed. Children should come first, they argued.

“We need another school ASAP,” said Veronica Tyson, a mother of Long Lots students. “We’re already in a very tight situation.”

Before the commission opened Monday’s meeting for public comments, Floyd said comments would be heard on whether to approve the Long Lots Building Committee’s recommendation and not for a discussion of other possible future sites for an athletic field or the gardens, which would take place at a future commission meeting.

Baron’s South contaminated?

But he allowed John Suggs, of the Westport Preservation Alliance and a District 9 RTM candidate, to speak first since Suggs had placed an array of large photos and charts of the Baron’s South property at the front of the Town Hall auditorium. 

Suggs was critical of the recommendation by the Long Lots committee and Tooker that the community gardens be relocated to Baron’s South. He said toxic fill has been dumped on the property, including petroleum products, “some form of asbestos” and arsenic, requiring enormous amounts of remediation and expense for the property to be used. “This is what the first selectwoman recommended,” he said.

After Suggs’s comments, no other speakers came forward to recommend use of the Baron’s property for the gardens.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.

Add as a preferred source on Google