On Monday night several Representative Town Meeting committees met in the town hall meeting room (meeting dial-in via Zoom) to discuss an the appeal from four Byram property owners who petitioned the RTM to appeal the Municipal Improvement (MI) status for a new Hamill Rink approved by the P&Z commission on Dec 10, 2024 in a vote of 4-1.
That’s a mouthful of detail for people who may be new to the proposal, but discussion focused on “the flip,” which is a proposal to build a new rink next on the location of the adjacent Strazza ballfield and operate the existing rink during construction. Later they would demolish the old rink and construct a new ballfield in its place. As such the town avoids the loss one or two years of ice time.
Also, with the flip, the ballfield could be optimally oriented in respect to the sun.
Further, the proponents said it would result in less ledge rock removal.
The MI was approved by P&Z in December, but a Final Site Plan has yet to be approved. And there were many conditions on approval of the Preliminary Site Plan, including:
“2. Submit complete information about the other skating rinks used by GPS students for ‘away’ events. Adjust rink site plan, as necessary, to be competitive versus municipal facilities in other towns and to provide optimal conditions for Greenwich students. In this regard, the Commission supports the 85’ x 200’ ice sheet but seeks more information about the specifications for the ancillary facilities and amenities.”
Also: “the Commission has noted that avoiding the loss of skating time may benefit only a small segment of the population while the public has commented that the rink relocation will permanently affect passive recreation users”
Some residents have complained that placing the rink toward the center of the park per “the flip,” would bifurcate the greenspace, one of the few open spaces left in the densely populated part of town.
The full RTM will consider the appeal of the MI at their Jan 21 meeting.
History
The existing skating rink has been on the property for almost 52 years. It was originally an open air rink. The roof was added in 1973. The facility was dedicated to Dorothy Hamill after her Olympic gold medal in the 1976 Winter Olympics. Walls were added in 1979 to fully enclose the rink facility. The interior bleachers were installed in 1997.
Beyond the warming area is a room that houses two sets of compressors and cooling equipment. The piping system for the ice making system is antiquated and beyond its service life. Credit: Leslie Yager
A Rink User Committee was appointed by First Selectman Fred Camillo and chaired by Bill Drake.
They worked with the town Parks & Rec director Joe Siciliano and Superintendent of Building Construction & Maintenance, Al Monelli, and more recently his successor, Luigi Romano, to organize surveys, work with architects and go through the P&Z process.
On Monday night about 100 people were in the town hall meeting room in person. (GFP attended via Zoom dial-in)
Petitioner Al Shehadi opened with comments against the MI, saying, Morlot Park, part of former Byram School, was primarily used by local residents, and the new rink was a proposed to be 40,000 sq, about 30% larger than existing rink.
He said the flip would cut a large open space into two, and extend operation to 11 months a year, as late as 11:00pm.
He argued the proposal was inconsistent with Plan of Conservation and Development, though the proponents of the flip have argued it conforms with the POCD.
Shehadi said the proposal lacked feedback from the Byram Neighborhood Association, and the Greenwich Tree Conservancy, and hadn’t changed to respond to P&Z feedback substantially since 2021.
“It’s been benchmarked compared to commercial rinks, non in similar residential areas,” Shehadi said, adding, “There is no question a new rink is needed, it’s been needed a while. It’s not a reason to accept a bad plan. We want them to come back with a new plan, not for one narrow group.”
Lucy von Brachel, another petitioner, said, “This is a major capital project lacking major community buy in.” She said estimates for the rink had escalated from original projections.
“There is no standardized process for town capital projects but it seems to me it should not be driven by one stakeholder group,” she continued, urging more community input and involvement. “Residents are also stakeholders, so we have to fight for representation.”
In response, Parks & Rec director Joe Siciliano said, “The plan to rebuild Dorothy Hamill rink has undergone several design iterations. Rebuilding (in the current rink location) is complicated because of ledge under rink and loss of usable ice during construction.”
Siciliano said alternative locations for the rink and even for a temporary rink during construction had been explored by the rink committee, none were found to be suitable.
He said a survey had asked residents if they supported the flip and that 84% were in favor.
He said several public meetings were held, and stakeholders interviewed through the process.
“This plan improves accessibility, improves the ballfield, adds landscaping, and avoids the need to construct a temporary rink,” he added.
Further, he said over three years there had been 26 public agenda meetings, all posted, that included outreach to stakeholders, including the neighborhood and skating groups, and that all those meetings had a public comment section.
Kristen Niemynski asked whether a traffic study had been completed.
Mr. Romano said it had. “We also did a peak traffic analysis of current rink. It modeled a similar number of users as there is today.”
He added that the new rink would have seating for fewer people (500 instead of the current 630) and fewer parking spaces, and that the current parking is non conforming, though there is overflow parking at Western Middle School.
Dan Quigley, land use chair, asked about ADA compatibility.
Mr. Romano replied that by relocating the rink to the north, the slopes would be more gradual compared to the six foot rise that exists today. He said there would be an accessible walkway around the rink, making the entire park more accessible.
Ms von Brachel said there was no way to get on and off the adjacent McKinney Terrace property, where there are stairs with railings.
“There has already been a lot of issues with accessibility and they haven’t included ADA access from McKinney Terrace,” she said. “I think that’s a big deal.”
Beth MacGillivray from the Legislative & Rules committee said the rink had previously been rejected and asked what was the “sticky wicket.”
Mr. Romano said while everyone wanted a new ice rink, but the point of contention was whether or not to flip or to build in place.
Mr, Shehadi, said, “I do construction financing professionally. You get professional cost estimates from a third party at regular intervals…I have the sense that the RTM has asked reasonable but pointed questions and the answers have been incomplete and the due diligence has not been done.”
Ms von Brachel said the application had not a lot changed over time, “It went to P&Z for pre applications a couple times, but didn’t go to MI til this past summer. It wasn’t going anywhere because it kept getting bad feedback and rejections.”
Mr. Siciliano disagreed.
“It wasn’t really rejected. It was vetted at the pre-application process. We finally got the preliminary approval and MI. That’s the process P&Z uses. It’s good because it saves the applicant time and expense. It wasn’t actually rejected. It was evaluated.”
Mary Flynn from the Education Committee asked why the proposal did not include a concession stand, which she said would be “family friendly.”
“You say there’s been 26 meetings but it hasn’t been well advertised to me,” Flynn said. “It needs redoing with more input.”
Mr. Siciliano replied that the current rink has operated without a concession for over 5 years.
“We put it out to bid but haven’t been able to get someone to run it,” he said. “There’s not enough opportunity for someone to make money.”
He said food trucks are a popular alternative.
“There will be places for the food trucks to have the food served through a window. We think it can work. We can rotate the five food trucks. Their trucks are self insured and they’ll have a space for electrical and water hookup.”
Ms Flynn asked, “Why the town can’t afford to make it attractive to a concessionaire?”
Mr. Siciliano said, “We put it out to bid several times in the 5 past years, and we haven’t had a successful bid.”
Andrea Blume asked about impervious surface and drainage.
Mr. Romano said an engineer was surveying drainage pipe capacity.
Ms Blume said, “You know that neighborhood across the street floods. It’s important it is looked at very closely.”
Jane Weisbecker, vice chair of Legislative & Rules, wanted details on the 26 meetings.
“Did the public have opportunity to give questions. Were they invited to speak or submit emails?” she asked.
Rink User Committee chair, Bill Drake, said, “Our meetings have been scheduled on our website a year in advance and our deliverables required a public comment session. They’ve all had public comment.”
Mr. Shehadi said, “I’ll quote something Roz Nicastro said. She lives across the street and attended all those rink committee meetings, and said the public comment took place after all the discussion and voting occurred. … It appears as if the rink users committee’s idea of a public meeting was to have the public come and listen to them.”
Ms von Brachel added, “Public meetings are not public hearings. In public meetings the chair can deny the public to speak. That’s what we mean when we say there was no public hearing.”
“I’d like to correct that,” Siciliano said. “There were two pubic hearings. There was one before the Board of Selectmen with a publicized agenda, and one for P&Z with a public hearing.”
Also, he said, “I attended a portion of the rink user meetings, and I don’t believe that statement (from Ms von Brachel) is correct.”
Sam Rosenfeld, from the Education committee, asked if the building planned for a smaller number of skaters, why was the square footage of the building increasing 30%.
Mr. Romano explained that the increased of size of the facility was not related to the seating capacity, but rather to accommodate locker rooms, mechanical equipment, office space and rest rooms per building codes.
“There will be 4 locker rooms to provide more efficient organization and other things are being brought inside, for example a Zamboni room will have an ice melting room inside the building.”
Also, he noted the size of the ice slab was increasing. Today it is 15 ft too short.
Mr. Shehadi said, “This is an area where we’d like more information. The P&Z commission asked for more information, and the town gave 8 comparable rinks they were using for bench marking. Six of those eight were commercial rinks. Only two were municipal rinks. What was not answered was what does the average town have? It goes back to transparency and diligence.”
Jack Duffy, a coach of the GHS hockey team, said, “Everybody knows when you run a rink efficiently with only one sheet, four locker rooms are the bare minimum….There are no extra bells and whistles on this building.”
Ms Nicastro said she lives 150 ft from the proposed the new rink location. “The current rink has garbage bins, vendors coming around and taking the trash. Where is all the trash going?”
Mr. Romano said the plan is to put the trash enclosure on the east corner of the building, which is closer to Putnam Green than today. “It will not be visible. It will have screening.”
“But the trees look so pretty,” Ms Nicastro said.
Ms von Brachel said in the past, projects had run out of funding before landscaping was completed.
Mr. Siciliano said that like the plans for the new Central Middle School, they could guarantee that money would be set aside for landscaping and not be co-mingled.
Jenny Jones from the Finance Committee asked if there had been analysis of the trade offs between buying 600 hours of $600 ice time to outsource ice activity for two years and build in-place.
Mr. Romano said any available ice was “outside hours,” so the financial analysis did not extend to that. He said what was considered was the option to build a temporary facility to use while building in place, but the cost was over $1 million.
Ms von Brachel said the question was complicated. “With Greenwich Skating Club and Wings Arena opening a new rink on border of Stamford, it’s hard to tell how much they’re going to take away from our rink. We also don’t know how much it costs to develop a ball field.”
Mr. Siciliano said the Greenwich Skating Club had already indicated they want all the ice time they can get at Hamill Rink.
“They’re going to build more of a practice facility, they have not wavered and they’re not giving up ice time,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be losing a customer at all.”
Noah Finz pressed the petitioners on their most compelling objections.
“Is it the flip? Is it the size? Is it that you haven’t been involved? What is it that you most object to?” he asked.
“Basically the points we’re making today are almost identical to the ones made four years ago,” Shehadi said, adding that the rink user committee was not fully representative, and two members of the Byram Veterans were removed because “they did not fit the program.”
“I’ll say more directly that the flip has been a huge problem,” Ms Von Brachel said. “It’s a local park and we were told the reason they have to do this is so they don’t have to lose two seasons of ice time. This is a park we’ve lived with 100 years.”
She said there was concern about disturbing the park and “complete leveling of properties that we all use.”
“Strazza is one of the better and nicer fields in town. It does have dugouts. That was the beginning of this. Why? The responses were, ‘Well, this is the only way.’ That was switched to, ‘Okay, we can put it on its current location. And then it switched back.”
Mr. Finz asked, “If they did not do the flip and made the building much bigger would that be ok?”
“Yes,” Ms von Brachel said.
Mr. Siciliano said, “Your BNA representative to the committee voted on it. The former BNA president walked the site with us and it seemed there was positive feedback they’d go back and sell it to the BNA.”
“Liz (Eckert’s) vote was about getting it out of the hands of this committee and into the hands of a committee that could do it the right way,” von Brachel said.
“‘Selling it to the BNA.’ That’s not how we operate,” Mr. Shehadi said.
Janet McMahon from the Education Committee asked, “What is the composition of the rink user committee? Is it true that nobody from BNA was invited to be on the committee?”
Mr. Shehadi said the rink user committee was originally conceived without anyone from the BNA or Byram Veterans.
“We knew we’d be outvoted on everything. Then the First Selectman added someone from BNA, but they didn’t have a vote. Then there were people invited who were put forward by the BVA who were turned down. It was challenging,” von Brachel recalled. “The people were picked by the First Selectman, and did not come through the RTM.”
Mr. Siciliano said, “The bottom line is the last three years there has been a member of the BNA on the committee. Maybe it got off to a slow start… but as people spoke up…they were added to the committee.”
He noted there had been 26 meetings of the rink user committee.
Sylvester Pecora asked, “Why are we spending all this money to rearrange a park that everyone in Byram loves? I heard more than once that there are only 2 or 4 people who don’t want the flip. It’s 84.”
Mr. Siciliano repeated that with a lost year of ice time, the available ice was before 6:00am or after 11:00pm.
“Our primary users are mostly children,” he said.
“Every large project we have in town has required some amount of inconvenience,” von Brachel said, adding that many children who went to New Lebanon, Western Middle and Hamilton Ave School had no access to a field their entire elementary and middle school years.
“And everyone was displaced from the Eastern Civic Center,” she said.
Asked what environmental testing has been done, Mr. Romano said both Phase 1 and Phase 2 environmental assessment were completed. Soil samples were taken and tested.
“Everything came back clean except for arsenic found in some of the locations, but that is naturally occurring at these levels and is very common,” he said, noting there was a similar situation in the area of the new Byram Pool.
Dawn Fortunato said she remained concerned about contamination and referred to the “toxic brew” found at Greenwich High School when they broke ground for the MISA project. She also said she feared the Veterans Memorial grove of trees would be “desecrated.”
“The arsenic is elevated and also contains iron. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The project will go up substantially with money (if contamination needs to be remediated). It’s going to go through the roof. Let’s be real.”
Mr. Siciliano said emphatically that the plans would not impede in any way on the grove of trees dedicated to veterans.
“No building will take place in that area. All this other dialogue you throw out there without factual information is just muddying the waters. I’m sorry you haven’t been following the plans.”
Dan Quigley said, “We’ve seen millions of dollars of creep on this project. The Eastern Greenwich Civic Center came out to $700 per sq ft. The price might go higher and higher and turn into something where we’re spending $35 to $40 million.”
Mr. Romano said the lower estimates were from several years ago. “Those were the numbers were were getting from the architect.”
Shehadi said, “You don’t go the architect for those numbers.”
Kara Philbin from the education committee asked about the formal process should the RTM deny the MI. “What happens next?”
Ms Alban, chair of the Planning & Zoning commission said: “Start over. They come back with a new application for MI.”
Steve Rubin, chair of the education committee said, “We’ve been told there will be public-private funding, but is any of that funding contingent on the location of the rink?”
Mr. Siciliano said, “There has been some initial talk with private funders, but it is not contingent on MI approval.”
After the group meeting, the committees dispersed to separate rooms for further discussion and to vote.
Jan 13 RTM Committee Votes
Land Use Committee (chaired by Dan Quigley)
4 yes, 5 no, 1 abstain
Public Works Committee (chaired by Cheryl Moss)
1 yes; 9 no
Finance Committee
3 yes, 6 no, 1 abstain
*Legislative & Rules Committee (chaired by Kip Burgweger)
0 yes, 5 no, 4 abstain on the merits
9 yes, 0 no on the legal order
L&R always has two votes: one on the merits and on the proposal
___
Last week the RTM Budget Overview Committee chaired by James Waters met separately and voted on the rink MI.
According to the Jan 9 BOC minutes, those in favor (D7 and D11) felt the project has been delayed long enough, and that uninterrupted “ice time” was crucial.
Those opposed (D1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12) felt there were too many fundamental questions to move forward with a capital project of this magnitude. Abstaining were D2, 4, and 6.
Further, per the minutes, “BOC members indicated that they thought the consideration of alternate sites had not been thorough or exhaustive. BOC members advised further evaluation on this topic, including an analysis on re-using the existing location.”
And from the BOC minutes: “Proponents of the MI said the $24mm construction estimate was provided by the project architects, using an expected cost of ~$600/square foot for a 40,000 square foot facility. No estimate was provided by a professional cost estimator. … The BOC Chair, who is also the OGSBC Chair, said he believed that if you used more recent new construction cost estimates, this project would easily cost $40mm+.”
Lastly, the minutes say, “Other guests expressed concern to the BOC regarding the composition of the Rink User Committee and conduct of their prior meetings. This made attendance at the Rink User Committee meetings difficult and public input was often reserved until after the committee voted on various items. In addition, one guest expressed a revolving door of membership on the Rink User Committee for representatives of the veterans population, with members rotated in or out depending on if they supported the Rink User Committee’s preference for the ‘flip’ plan.”
The BOC vote was to reject: 2 yes, 7 no, 3 abstain.
Update: On Tuesday, Jan 14, the Parks & Rec committee vote on the MI failed:
5 yes, 6 no, 0 abstentions
Update #2: The Education Committee took it up also (because of heavy use for GHS athletics) and voted 3 yes, 8 no, 1 abstain
See also:
Hamill Rink MI Approved by P&Z; Site Plan Moves to Final with Lengthy Requirements Dec 11, 2024
At Memorable P&Z Meeting, Byram Neighbors Again Push Back on “The Rink Flip”
Nov 14, 2024
Proposed Hamill Rink: The stepsister trying to squeeze her foot into Cinderella’s slipper?
August 7, 2024
Veterans Blast Hamill Rink User Committee: “There Will Be Hell to Pay”
June 24, 2021