By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — Neighbors of Long Lots Elementary School and members of the Westport Community Gardens haven’t seen the concerns about plans for a new Long Lots school they’ve expressed before boards and commissions gain much traction in recent months.

The Long Lots School Building Committee’s plan to replace the seven-decade-old school on Hyde Lane with a new building, while booting the gardens to make way for a multi-purpose athletic field for children older than elementary age, was highballing along.

But Monday night there was something of a sea change.

Several members of the Planning and Zoning Commission — the gatekeepers for such municipal improvement projects under the state’s 8-24 legislation — expressed serious concerns about how the neighbors and gardeners have been treated, and questioned why such a ballfield for older athletes was strapped onto the school plan almost no one disputes is sorely needed.

Under state law, the school replacement project needs a positive 8-24 report from the Planning and Zoning Commission to move forward. The commission has 35 days to issue a report in favor or against, Town Attorney Ira Bloom said at the online Zoom meeting. If no report is made, it is considered approved.

Bloom wrote previously in a memo entered into the record that the commission could “bifurcate” the issue if it chooses, separating decisions on the new school building and the relocated ballfield.

The meeting had at times more than 190 attendees and lasted a mere six-and-a-half hours.

First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker presented the town’s request.

“The application before you tonight includes One, building a new school facility with enhanced sustainability where the current multi-purpose field is located,” she said. “Two, keeping the current school operational and safe during construction. Three, moving the multi-purpose field to the upper portion of the property, and four, maintaining the lower soccer fields.”

“And as an additional recommendation, which we will handle in a separate 8-24, moving the community gardens to the town property at Baron’s South, next to the Westport Center for Senior Activities.”

P&Z Chairman Paul Lebowitz made it clear early he had issues with the request.

Addressing Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Fava and her Operations Director Carmen Roda, Lebowitz said:

“Regardless of what is currently on this site, whether it’s a school or not a school, doesn’t matter. If you came to me as a commissioner and said I want to put a baseball field there, and now you pointed to the terrace one and two [the southern two portions of the campus], I would look at you and say no way.”

“It’s just my personal feeling that that site is not the right site for a baseball field,” Lebowitz said. “It is too close to the neighbors, and it is incorrectly positioned.”  

“You’re just taking the one that’s on the site, which is terrace 3, and moving it to terrace 1 and 2,” he said.

“The one you want on terrace 1 and 2 is a full regulation-size Babe Ruth field,” Lebowitz said. “Which means it is bigger than the one you have, that’s why you want it up there … to me, that’s what’s known as an intensification of use.”

“And so not only would you be putting this up next to the neighbors, but you would be intensifying the use of the field to make it more useable for more people more of the time,” he said.

“I don’t care how much screening you put up between you and the neighbors on that field, it just won’t fly,” Lebowitz said. “Not with me.”

He also picked at earlier Parks and Recreation comments on the field’s usage.

“In my mind, what you have said, is this field is not being used nearly as much as you have said,” Lebowitz said.

Other members, Democrats and Republicans alike, had concerns.

Member Patrizia Zucaro asked about talk of an underground waterway beneath the community gardens, and if the building committee had considered a third story for the proposed school to reduce the footprint.

And, she asked, as the building committee was going over the various iterations for the project, “was the community gardens a priority or a thought, or were you planning or proposing ideas with an understanding that these folks were using the land?”

Member Neil Cohn said the issue was a tough one.

“I’m not comfortable abandoning the gardens,” he said. “There are up to 300 people involved.”

“I really see the massive benefit in having a community garden,” Cohn said. “And all of the years that have been spent on that, we shouldn’t take that lightly.” The gardens have been cultivated on the Hyde Lane property, adjacent to the school, for two deacdes.

“I realize we have to do what’s right for all the students and we want the best school possible, but we need to be really respectful of those people and also really respectful of the neighbors,” Cohn said.

“I’m hoping that by Jan. 8 what we see is something that’s more clear,” he said, mentioning that the official plan to move the gardens has yet to filed by the first selectwoman.

“How are we supposed to know what the full picture really is?” Cohn said. “… it’s a game of Clue.”

Member Amy Wistreich said it’s clear a new school is needed, and that there are many issues on the table.

“I feel that with 28 acres on our site, we can accommodate many of our stakeholders,” she said. “Maybe not a Babe Ruth baseball stadium, but apart from that I think we can accommodate all the stakeholders and I want to be clear that I want to issue a positive report and I feel really good about a lot of the work the school committee did, and I also would prefer not to make a bifurcated decision … however, if we do not have the information on the site that we need I will have to vote for a bifurcated decision.”

Member John Bolton, a Republican who lost re-election in November but was recently recommended by his party to fill a vacancy left by the departure of Ami Tessler, was unanimously voted onto the board Monday night. Town Clerk Jeffrey Dunkerton swore him in.

“There’s no doubt that the gardens are a tremendous benefit to this town,” he said. “But it can’t coexist on this piece of property anymore.”

Member Michael Calise also asked if a three-story school wouldn’t be more efficient. And he didn’t like displacement of the gardens.

“I’m feeling very strongly about retention of the gardens and integrating the gardens into the site,” Calise said.

He said he’s been at hearings over the years where someone wants a little more coverage, and then their neighbor, who never had a problem before, has water in their basement.

“Given the layout of the site and the properties around it the community garden helps prevent those kinds of problems,” Calise said.

Ian Warburg said a lot of form letters had been sent in from school parents.

“And they’ve all been led to believe that there’s a false dichotomy that there are only two choices here,” he said. “Save the gardens or delay the construction of a new school.”

“I don’t think this needs to be an either or, rather I think this can be a both and,” Warburg said. “We do not need to burn the village to save it.”

Veronica Tysseland, a Long Lots mother who lives nearby, said most of the commenters don’t have “skin in the game” like she does.

“It’s very easy to throw around the terms, ‘Oh, yes of course I want a new school,’ … it’s easy to make the statement that you care about the children but don’t actually have a child there, maybe you don’t even know children there,” Tysseland said.

“Everything that everyone is saying that they want the school, and they want all these other things too, and all I hear is delay,” Tysseland said. “Everything that has been said, bifurcating the vote, everything that everyone has been mentioning, will delay the school. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that.

“All I hear with these ideas is delay, delay, delay,” she said.

The hearing was continued to Jan. 8.

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.