The Westport News reported today that Planning and Zoning Commissioner Michael Krawiec was one of nine Westport officials who signed the Y Downtown petition, calling on P&Z commissioners to vote against the Family Y’s application to build a new facility at Camp Mahackeno.
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Earlier this week A. J. Izzo gave the Planning and Zoning Commission a photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt making a presidential campaign stop in front of the Westport Weston Family Y. He asked that the photo be made part of the public record in the Family Y’s application to build a new facility at Camp Mahackeno.
It’s not certain if Mr. Izzo was trying to stress the history of the Bedford YMCA building or if he wanted to highlight that President Roosevelt couldn’t enter the building.
The Family Y didn’t have wheelchair ramps in 1936. The building is still not ADA-compliant, which means you can’t use most of the Y if you are in a wheelchair or on crutches.
Yet another reason why we need to Make Mahackeno Happen.
Last year, Y Downtown and their fellow travellers tried to convince the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and the Westport Conservation Commission, that the Family Y’s project at Mahackeno would destroy the Saugatuck River and pollute Long Island Sound. They failed.
Now, in the middle of the P&Z hearings, Amy Ancel (RTM District 3) has come up with a novel approach: claim that Connecticut taxpayers may pay the construction costs if the Family Y gains approval to build at Mahackeno. Yes, you read that right.
In a letter entitled “Hang on to Your Wallet,” (click to read) which was published in Wednesday’s (4/23) Westport News, Ms. Ancel created a fanciful building budget of $60 million, a figure that is 50 percent higher than the Y’s estimate. She then speculates that if the Family Y can’t raise enough money, “there is a strong possibility that we, the taxpayers will foot the bill.”
Ms. Ancel claims that this was the case in Greenwich, where the Family YMCA asked the State of Connecticut for $20 million to fund its renovation and expansion. However, Connecticut didn’t give the Greenwich Family YMCA $20 million. Rather, it helped arrange debt financing.
In 2005, the Greenwich Family YMCA issued $20,165,000 in bonds through the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority. The Greenwich Family YMCA borrowed that money and it will have to pay back the bondholders when the bonds mature.
The CHEFA was created in 1965 to provide Connecticut’s nonprofit institutions “access to low cost financing in the public municipal markets.” In the last fiscal year, CHEFA issued over $849 million in bonds and it now has a bond portfolio worth more than $6.6 billion. That money has been used to finance construction projects for a wide variety of Connecticut nonprofits, including colleges and universities, independent schools, theaters and human service providers, such as YMCAs.
It is not clear in the current market that the Westport Weston Family Y would ever ask CHEFA to arrange $20 million in debt financing. But the Y may ask for some. Even if the Y could find a way to qualify for a state grant, so what?
You would think that as a local elected official, Amy Ancel would be happy to see Hartford send some money back down to Westport. (After all, Westport residents pay a lot more money in state taxes than they get back.) But Ms. Ancel has always seemed less interested in working for the common good of Westport residents and more interested in thwarting Mahackeno. “That is what they elected me to do,” Ms. Ancel claimed in the Westport News last month, when she defended her single-issue politics. Perhaps they did, but it’s doubtful that the voters want Ms. Ancel to stretch the truth to the breaking point in the process.
The WWFY [Westport Weston Family Y] is the next largest community service provider after the schools and the town.
The special use permit application before the P&Z now has as its focus the betterment of Westport as a community.
There is significant precedent for special use permit approval for community benefit in Westport. I cite only those with which I am personally familiar.
I was chairman of the Westport Board of Education during the planning and approval for Green’s Farms Elementary School, Coleytown Middle School, Bedford Middle School and Wakeman Fields expansion, Saugatuck Elementary School and Staples High School. I was there at the Compo Beach Playground with my hammer.
All these special use sites had neighbors and were in neighborhoods, all were traffic generators, all had to deal with groundwater runoff and one even had a huge onsite septic system. All of these had opposition; fortunately, all were approved.
Today, if you visit these special use sites, you find many new homes adjacent to or near these wonderful community facilities indicating that property value and neighborhood character remain vital. Newcomers to town no doubt would be surprised, perhaps shocked, to learn that there had been opposition to any one of these. Without question, all of these special use permit approvals have left Westport a better place.
Westport should be proud that these decisions were made and that the community is a better place now. Fruition of the WWFY proposal to move its highly valued community services to the Mahackeno location will add another community institution that will leave Westport a better place.
Steven Halstead
[Editor’s Note: Steven Halstead is a former chairman of the Westport Board of Education and husband of Rosemary Halstead, a member of the board of directors of the Westport Weston Family Y.]
Matthew Mandell recently suggested that people take look at the latest video on the Y Downtown Web site, so I did.
Y Downtown seems to be using an unlicensed version AVS Video Converter. I guess that really isn’t surprising given Y Downtown’s lack of financial and political support. (Can we forget that earlier this winter Amy Ancel was begging for money by stuffing mailboxes with Y Downtown flyers?)
But there does seem to be a pattern here: a complete lack of respect for private property. Perhaps Y Downtown doesn’t pay for software because its members don’t care. That could explain why they fail to accept that Camp Mahackeno is private land; not some “open space” owned by the town. They just don’t care about the rights of (intellectual or real) property owners.
As the Westport Weston Family Y seeks its final approval from the P&Z, I am compelled to speak up against the mistruths that are once again being spun about this worthy project. This is the final opportunity for my fellow citizens to understand that there is no possible downtown location. Mahackeno is the only option if there is to be a Y in Westport!
And a terrific option it is! There is plenty of room for the new Y with many acres of open space still preserved. The economics work for a nonprofit like the Family Y because they already own the property, a gift from Leo Nevas.
The Family Y is strategic for our town. It is an amenity that adds to the fabric of the community and to the value of Westport. Having lived here all my life, it is unthinkable to me that we could be without the Y. I want my kids and grandkids and many future generations to have the same opportunities that I did at the Westport Y.
When the Y started to put together the plan for Mahackeno, I agreed to be a co-chair of the capital campaign to raise the needed funds. I am looking forward to the day when P&Z gives its approval and we can begin working to fund and build the wonderful new Family Y that our town needs.
Last week I read a New York Times article about Westport, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The article talked about a project that “is dividing the town in two;” a project plagued by lawsuits filed by angry neighbors because they view it as unnecessary, out of place, and an affront to open space. No, I wasn’t reading about the Westport Weston Family Y proposal to build at Mahackeno. The article was dated March 12, 1989. It reported the hostility caused by the playground at Compo Beach.
When my wife and I first considered moving here, in 1991, our Realtor took us on a tour of Westport. She showed us the playground because she knew we were planning to start a family, and laughed when she told us how controversial it had been. I had no idea that 17 years later I would find myself in the middle of a similar controversy.
For those of you who enjoy the playground but fear the Mahackeno project, I’ll note that the playground designer had built 500 playgrounds in 25 states before coming to Westport, where he faced his first lawsuit. Fear and litigation are part of our legacy, but they don’t need to be part of our future.
As old-timers know, every major project in Westport’s recent history – from the acquisition of Longshore, to the construction of Bedford Middle School, to the development of the playground at Compo Beach – has been met with such opposition. And yet, these are some of the jewels of Westport that Realtors show off to newcomers. These are the things that make Westport so desirable, and yes, these are the things that increase property values throughout Westport. All of them are in residential areas. And none of them are downtown.
I mention this because there is a persistent group that asserts that the Y “belongs” downtown. Ten RTM members went so far as to claim downtown is the “spiritual” center of Westport. I respectfully submit that the spirit of Westport is embodied in our people, and most of us are as happy at the margins as in the center. I have never heard a sunbather at Compo or a golfer or swimmer at Longshore complain that they were just too far from downtown. And, judging from the children and seniors I see on the beach in the summer, they don’t seem to have too much trouble getting there, either.
So, after all the hearings that convinced the local and state authorities that the plan is environmentally sound, we now come down to the last two fears: traffic and property values. The traffic expert hired by the Y, who has done surveys for many local municipalities, showed that with mitigation activities proposed by the Y, the impact on traffic in that area will be 40-80 seconds under worst case conditions if the Y membership increases by 33 percent. The opposition has come out against traffic lights as strongly as they oppose sewer connections. One might ask if the rest of us should suffer because this group opposes the type of mitigation efforts suggested by the Connecticut DOT, even before a Y at Mahackeno was proposed. We can mitigate most of the impact of the new Y, just as we can improve traffic tie-ups today. Some people just don’t like the solutions.
The presentation to P&Z given by an expert appraiser indicates a worst-case property value impact of less than 5 percent on the houses adjacent to the Mahackeno property on Sunny Lane. That’s exactly two houses, and one of them is bank-owned after a foreclosure. Despite the fears of other neighbors, history tells us that the net result will be positive for them, too. Can anyone honestly claim that the playground at Compo lowers property values in that area? For every potential buyer that shies away from a child’s delight or family recreation facility, surely there is another who would welcome the chance to walk to such a destination.
With all that in mind, I ask you to remember why you like living in Westport. Take a drive past Compo and its well-used playground, and imagine how many children – and parents – have enjoyed it over the years. Take a stroll around Longshore. Visit our wonderful middle school and ask whether these projects were all worth the effort. Their supporters overcame fear and litigation to help make Westport what it is today.
Then take a walk around downtown, and imagine just a few more shops or restaurants behind the familiar facade of the old Y. Stop in at the Y and take a good look at the architectural model and plans for the Mahackeno project. You’ll see enhanced recreational opportunities for children and the disabled, and unlike the current Y, the ceilings at Mahackeno will actually be high enough to allow gymnasts over 5′1″ tall. This isn’t a facility for elite athletes – it is a place to let everyone improve their health, skills and safety while continuing the programs that benefit us all, like extensive lifeguard training. While you’re there, note the care that was taken in its design to make it minimally intrusive to the neighbors, and the fact that it will be the first public facility in Westport built to the LEED standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Finally, take a walk around the Mahackeno site, as I did recently with the P&Z commissioners. Note that after construction of the new Y there will still be well over 20 acres of camp and woods left untouched (and many more would be untouched if the Y were allowed to connect to the sewer instead of needing this space for a septic leeching field).
Now ask yourself, do I want to help bring this magnificent showcase of a green facility to Westport to provide services that benefit so many? Or, do I want to be part of the group that turns the Mahackeno site into a housing development and runs the Y out of Westport? Despite the smokescreen put up by the loyal opposition, there is no downtown solution and the Y cannot continue to run a deficit at the old facility.
It really is that simple.
As someone who has served on the Westport Weston Family Y Board of Trustees for about 12 years, attempting to find a suitable location for a new Y building, it is most discouraging to see a small group of people, including 10 RTM members, proposing “pie in the sky” ideas to derail a new Y building on the north edge of Camp Mahackeno. The Family Y does more for Westport citizens than any private organization in town. A new Y building will enhance our lives and improve all of our property values.
Both the 10 RTM members and former Selectman John Izzo suggest that the Planning and Zoning Commission should reject the Y’s proposal to build at Camp Mahackeno. They both attempt to lead the public into believing that most if not all of the property at Mahackeno would be developed when in fact the Y only plans to use 8 of the 11 acres next to the Merritt Parkway for the building and parking. The 21 acres to the south that is used for the summer camp would remain open space with the septic system underground in an out of the way location. They both push for the Y to work with the town after the P&Z rejects Camp Mahackeno.
There can be no change of use for town land unless the first selectman issues a 8-24 proposal to the P&Z to make a change. Then the P&Z has to approve the proposed change. The Y worked with then First Selectwoman Farrell for several years in an attempt to develop some kind of an arrangement on Baron’s South. As part of the proposal the Y offered to buy a portion of Baron’s South and to build a Senior Center as part of the new Y. There were strong objections from neighbors opposing any kind of an arrangement that would allow the Y to build on Baron’s South. An outside consultant was hired by the town to consider how Baron’s South and Winslow Park should be used. The consultant’s recommendations were consistent with Ms. Farrell’s plans. She rejected any consideration of building a new Y on Baron’s South.
More recently, a new outside consultant, Weston and Sampson, was hired by the town to consider the use of Baron’s South and Winslow Park. It should be no surprise that Weston and Sampson provided recommendations in line with First Selectman Joseloff’s plans for affordable and workforce housing. The consultant used a large footprint for the Y and concluded that there was not enough room for both the housing and the Y. At this same time the RTM Long Range Planning Committee held public meetings to consider the best use for Baron’s South and Winslow Park. In the course of those meetings, Mr. Joseloff pointedly told the RTM Committee, specifically Mr. Steinberg, who was one of the signers of this new letter, that there was no room for the Y on Baron’s South. Not recognizing the power the first selectman has in making the decisions on the use of town-owned land, Mr. Steinberg responded that the RTM would have a role in the decision. The Town Charter does not provide for a role by the RTM.
Now, we have the RTM members saying that “we hold our hands out to the Y directors and trustees and ask them to join us in accomplishing something that will truly benefit their membership and Westport.” Neither these RTM members, nor Mr. Izzo, are in a position to offer anything other than an attempt to delay and disrupt what the Y is proposing to do to provide an outstanding facility for the citizens of Westport. They do not recognize that the Y management has been working for over 10 years to find a suitable location for a new Y building. Y management finally recognized that the best available location is on land at the north edge of Camp Mahackeno near the Merritt Parkway.
The Y can not continue to remain downtown in its present building as some have recommended. The building is decrepit, expensive to maintain, and is the cause of the loss of membership. The Y is operating at a loss. To build a new facility on that location would cause the Y to have to shut its operations down for about two years. It would probably cost over $30 million and the Y would lose the approximately $25 million it will receive under the contract to sell its downtown property. At this point it is too late to consider staying in the present building as the Y directors wisely decided that the near term commercial real estate market was at a peak and made a deal to sell the property. There is a firm contractual arrangement with the buyer.
Like a lot of Westport citizens I wanted a Y in the downtown area. As a member of the Y Board of Trustees, I worked very hard for a long time to make this happen. I recognized early on that we could not stay in our present property due to the need to shut down operations for too long to rehabilitate the building and the property became so valuable it will provide a significant amount of the financing for a new building. First Selectwoman Farrell and First Selectman Joseloff have been unwilling to consider making town property downtown available to sell to the Y. We have looked downtown, all through Westport and in neighboring towns and cities for a suitable location without success. It is time now for all of us to get behind what the Y is proposing at Camp Mahackeno.
Let’s not lose this opportunity to provide an outstanding facility for everyone in our town.
Editor’s Note: Pete Wolgast is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Westport Weston Family Y.
We are mothers of Westport children and we live in your RTM District. We were confused and disappointed by the recent op-ed commentary “A Solution for the Y and Westport,” which you coauthored with nine other RTM members.
You and your colleagues signed your opinion piece as members of the Representative Town Meeting. Does this mean that you are making an official proposal? Have you taken a vote as RTM members? It doesn’t matter, for – although you were elected to represent our district – you most certainly do not represent our views when it comes to the future of the Westport Weston Family Y.
Some of us are lawyers, which is why we are particularly concerned that you and your RTM colleagues have publically encouraged the P&Z commissioners to “apply tough love” and deny the Family Y’s application. You claim that such a denial will force the Family Y to “work with local leaders in finding a solution that fits with contemporary planning theory” at Baron’s South. But the P&Z commissioners cannot deny the Y’s application because they prefer a different site, or because the application fails to fit with “contemporary planning theory.” The commissioners – who are constrained by regulation and case law – must judge the Family Y’s application on its merits.
You are a new member of the RTM and we don’t know where you were in the late 1990s, when the Family Y proposed relocating to Baron’s South, but you should know the Y’s proposal was roundly turned down. After eight months of study, the Baron’s South Planning Committee – which First Selectman Diane Goss Farrell created soon after the town bought the Baron’s property – voted 7-1, with one abstention, against the Family Y. Public opinion was solidly against building a new Y on the Baron’s property. Any new plan will be opposed because the political climate hasn’t changed since 1999. Indeed, First Selectman Gordon Joseloff has continued his predecessor’s opposition to using town land for a new Family Y.
You said that the Westport Center for Senior Activities “has been so successful that it already is slated for expansion – with a request for a pool of its own.” However, the Center is not expanding nor building a pool, according to its Policy and Planning Board.
Rather than rebut the other points of your “solution” op-ed, we encourage you to review the Mahackeno plans, which have been presented to the P&Z Commission. We also urge you to listen to your constituents – and ask us what we want for our children – instead of jumping on the anti-Y bandwagon, which is being driven by some of your RTM colleagues.
Jeanne Bowles, Peggy Mevs, Maura Mula, Marcy Rappaport, Jamie Schachter, Sharon Seymour and Adrienne Williams
The Westport Family Y’s Mahackeno proposal is now before the P&Z, and the complaints are raining down like dead fish. The warnings are increasingly dire. The end is near. Mahackeno is coming. Lock up your wives and daughters! The signs, which pop up like weeds at some of Westport’s worst performing intersections (the irony of which shouldn’t be lost on the P&Z) strike a similarly apocalyptic note, albeit with unintended humor. “Mahackeno = fish, kills + pollution” reads one sign, an unneeded comma punctuating the grim message of impending ecological doom to comic effect. Another sign helpfully points north with the words “Cut Thru to Mahackeno.” I already know about the cut thru, but thanks just the same.
In a week marked by political hypocrisy on the scale of Greek tragedy, the assault on the Family Y hit a new low. Ten people submitted a statement to the press in which, donning their official RTM hats, they dismissed the Mahackeno plan on the usual grounds. [click to read] The traffic and pollution will turn beautiful open space into Beijing West. And the things the Y wants, after all, are immoderate, excessive, out of whack. Their solution? Keep the Y central and accessible and shrink it to fit onto Baron’s South. Have they been sleeping the past 10 years? Rip Van Winkle slept on the banks of the Hudson, not the Saugatuck. But his awakening was marked by less denial of the facts and certainly by less chutzpah.
Whom does this Gang of 10 purport to represent? The people who elected them? I support the Y’s move to Mahackeno and no one contacted me to ask my opinion.
I surely don’t recall giving my RTM reps carte blanche at the voting booth to misrepresent their opinions as my own.
These “representatives” (and I use the term loosely) claim that the town is “deeply divided.” On what basis do they make this claim? Based on letters like theirs? Most of the bad press comes from the same quarters — Mahackeno neighbors and the usual contrarians who organize around the idea that all change is bad and any compelling evidence to the contrary must be ignored. Then again, anyone with Mapquest can figure out that three of the 10 RTM reps are Mahackeno neighbors, a fourth wins the Mahackeno trifecta, (close to the junction of 57 and 33, Lees Dam and the Saugatuck); and a fifth has a view of the Merritt so exclusive, he can almost reach out and touch the cars as they whiz by or stand still. I guess he prefers to see them whiz by.
I have no clue why the other five joined them, but the 10 collectively have no authority. One of our local papers, in a stroke of editorial folly, not only gave the group opinion space but also front-page coverage, the investigative nature of which was so subtle, it eluded the reader. After all, these are 10 people who oppose the Y’s move who happen to be on the RTM. They aren’t 10 RTM members acting in an official capacity. Yet they don their RTM hats, the better to beguile the public, ignoring years of history regarding the Y’s Strategic Planning process and second guessing the judgment and motives of the Y’s Board of Directors, who collectively have 1,000 years of public service behind them. They falsely contend that the Y’s board has failed in its due diligence. But the specs for a new Y in 2008 are essentially the same as they were 10 years ago when my tenure on the board ended, and are based on years of research and planning. My kids who used to be Water Rats are in college and I have let my membership lapse, so I can hardly be accused of having a vested interest beyond my deep desire not to let Westport become Potterville. I’ve been watching the public drama unfold in the meantime, but the spectacle of these 10 people misusing their public office (and the newspaper’s failing to pick up on it) forced me off the sidelines.
Particularly odious is the suggestion by these self-anointed experts that the Y Board of Directors is baiting local land-use bodies with an unseen (can you say “phony”?) contract for the sale of the existing property “said to be executed to generate building funds, but one may ask was it also done to leverage approvals from town boards and generate empathy from residents?” One may indeed ask. If one has been asleep for 10 years, it is permissible to offer up such questions as proof that one is out of touch with reality. The Y doesn’t really need millions of dollars, after all, in order to build a new building. The supposed “contract” is a clever ruse to get the P&Z to cave in to the Y’s evil plot to destroy life as we know it in Westport with a new and improved facility, including a Satanic childcare center, a fetid 50-meter pool complex and treacherous trails for hiking by would-be evil-doers and eco-terrorists in training.
Can a Y even fit on Baron’s South, as the authors suggest? I’m certain it can. If we get rid of most of the stuff the Y really needs and squeeze what’s left in with a really big shoehorn. Would the neighbors who sacked the first Baron’s South plan welcome the Y with open arms, or at least take a long nap during construction? Would the traffic objections raised 10 years ago go away? The study by Weston and Sampson Engineers (the same study cited by the 10 as evidence of that property’s continued feasibility as a Y location) concludes that “development of any kind will be limited by the access points, existing traffic congestion, and traffic lights; therefore less intensive development should be a priority for the site.” Hmmm I wonder what they mean by “less intensive.” And where is the Post Road access promised by these 10? It doesn’t exist. Maybe they dreamed it.
I’ve been conscious the past 10 years, driving the same roads that the authors of this letter believe would offer easy access to a Y at Baron’s South. Who are they kidding? There is little will in this town to improve any intersection ever. You can’t lay the blame for that with the Y. Many in our town suffer from a pernicious and entrenched belief in a fantasy world that no longer exists and may never have existed in which Westport is a sleepy little New England town in the manner of Peyton Place where every family has one driver and one car and all the stores are Mom & Pop establishments where you can still buy a cream soda for a nickel.
Like it or not, a lot of traffic flows through this town. The Merritt Parkway can sometimes look like a used car lot. But hey, the Boston Post Road at the intersection of Route 33 is no picnic either. How about the intersection of Cross Highway and North Avenue? Or the junction of 57 and 33? Or the dangerous intersection of 57 and 136? All are in need of remediation. The Y hasn’t cornered the market on congestion. Westport has eight schools, tons of shopping and lots of cars. Some traffic moves through town to avoid 95 and the Merritt. Some of it comes to visit. But much of it stays right here. Shouldn’t our elected representatives focus their attention on mediating the existing traffic hang-ups and improving the quality of life for all their constituents? Holding up the Y for another 10 years isn’t going to make the people or the cars or the traffic go away. Baron’s South seemed like a good idea 10 years ago while you guys were sleeping. Now it’s time to wake up and catch up to reality. The next time you run for office, we won’t be sleeping.
Donna Smirniotopoulos