New Rink Committee In Sprint To Meet Aug. 1 Deadline; Public Meetings Set For July 14, 20

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Photo: The design of the new municipal rink (The Galante Architecture Studio)

While the majority of building committees’ work resemble a long-distance race, the newly-formed Municipal Skating Rink Building Committee is like watching Usain Bolt in full flight as the 12-member committee attempts to sprint the project onto the Nov. 8 ballot.

Facing a list of tasks that would make Hercules blush, the committee is seeking to create a completed design of the structure, a plan to revamp the fields and manage parking while coming up with a detail price tag for the entire project, all of it done in less than a month.

”We have 25 calendar days to meet our [Aug. 1] deadline,” Committee Chair Mark Haley said at the committee’s Wednesday, July 6 meeting that focused on the latest project feasibility study. And during that compressed interval, the committee is looking to introduce the project to residents.

That part of the plan starts with a pair of public meetings – on Thursday, July 14 and Wednesday, July 20, sandwiched between critical joint meetings of the Select Board and School Committee on July 18 and an informational get-together with the Planning Board on July 19. The meeting on Bastille Day will be dedicated to the rink design, while the 20th will highlight parking and the three playing surfaces ”west of Harris Field.”

The committee has been meeting weekly almost since it was created on June 13 during Town Meeting and will continue through July with the specific goal of having a debt exclusion ballot question to fund the rink before voters in November. The rush is required as the Select Board faces an August 1 deadline to make a final decision on debt exclusion measures to Belmont Town Clerk Ellen Cushman who will seek state approval to place any on the general election ballot.

And while the committee could present what it hopes is a complete package, that November vote is far from a certainty as all that work will need to come up to scratch by the expectations of the Select Board.

“It may be very difficult to meet that next timeline … because there’s a lot that needs to happen between now and Aug. 1,” said Mark Paolillo, the board’s chair, pointing to a volumes of recommendations it must produce to the Select Board and School Committee to meet its mandate.

”I’m just suggesting that, perhaps, it could be challenging,” said Paolillo.

As of the July 6 meeting, the rink design is fairly straight forward with architect Ted Galante using the steel skeleton of the existing structure, more detailed – but not yet finalized – design with the building expanding more in the front and the rear with the programs enclosed with the building creeping closer to Harris Field bleachers in an attempt not to impact the fields and eliminate a small alleyway between the two structures.

Take a peak at the July 6 municipal rink feasibility study here

Galante of The Galante Architecture Studio brought to the July 6 meeting a blueprint that severed the project into two parts with the majority of the program – the rink, community room, restrooms, hockey locker rooms – to be built in a first phase with the Harris Field locker rooms for fall and spring sports left for a later date with separate funding.

The dual construction phasing was quickly scuttled by the committee. “If it’s not done now, it will never happen,” said Ann Marie Mahoney. “It needs to be a complete project” brought before the Select Board and the public.

The full range of locker rooms are necessary as the new Middle and High School only has two full-scale locker rooms, for boys’ and girls’ varsity a limit imposed by the Massachusetts School Building Authority in its partnership with the town. According to Superintendent John Phelan who met with Haley and School Committee Chair Meg Moriarty the day before, the four lockers at the rink will barely meet the demands of the school’s athletic teams.

While the design is moving forward, the west fields and just how much parking is proving to be stickier issues to resolve. The fields as well as the parking component were “inherited” by the rink committee when they were orphaned by the Belmont Middle and High School Building Committee which abandoned the fields and the associated parking from its original plan to reallocate $5 million to its contingency funds.

“This complicates the picture,” said Tom Gatzunis, the committee’s owners project manager, with the committee forced to add the scope of the fields and the need for parking under its watch with a substantial increase to the building’s price tag and complexity.

With the BMHSBC washing its hands of West of Harris Field, the need for 120 parking spaces negotiated with the Planning Board more than four years ago has been taken off the board. With the ability to start anew, Galante said earlier analysis of the rink revealed a demand for 88 spaces on game days. Galante’s current intention is to utilize the ”jug handle” parking across Concord Avenue from the Underwood Pool along with new spaces where the White Field House currently sits.

Members noted that parking will be “a very hot button issue” for neighbors as they fought hard to take vehicles off side streets. Frank French, Jr. pondered the idea the committee could simply leave parking the way it is currently with patrons and fans using on-street parking along Concord Avenue when using the rink. The committee believes it will have a more detailed parking plan by the time it meets with the Select Board and School Committee on July 18 and for a critical Planning Board meeting the next day.

With the elements of the project increased with the addition of the fields and parking, the price tag on the expanded rink has increased by a third from the first estimate in of $19 million, currently in a range between $28-$32 million. Dante Muzzioli said the project must come in below $30 million, a price point that, if that number was breeched, would prove difficult for residents to support.

“We are going to get one bite of the apple,” said Muzzioli.

The members of the new committee are chair Mark Haley, Dante Muzzioli, Anthony Ferrante, Stephen Sala, Frank French, Jr, Catherine Oakes, Megan Moriarty, Bill Shea, Tom Caputo, Dan Halston, Ann Marie Mahoney and Dynelle Long.

Latest Rink Configuration OK’d By School Committee; Tennis Courts Remain A ‘?’

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Photo: The scheme approved by the school committee for a new skating rink in Belmont

The Belmont School Committee unanimously approved on Wednesday, May 12, the latest design scheme for a new skating/hockey rink located near the present location adjacent to Harris Field.

The joint meeting with the Belmont Select Board did not address a pair of vital issues that still require answers: how to find the $18 million to replace the dilapidated half century old rink, and how to resolve a consistent clarion call of the town’s tennis community seeking to squeeze five courts into a site already bursting at the seams.

“We do need to close this matter out and move the discussion forward. It’s not fair to anyone to just keep dragging it out and providing any group with any false expectations,” said Adam Dash, the Select Board chair who co-hosted the meeting with the School Committee’s Amy Checkoway whose committee controls the land use where the rink would reside.

Responding to a request from the town, Steven Stefton, lead of the sports and recreation practice of Perkins&Will’s Boston office, presented a trio of schemes in which the rink, parking, and three sports fields occupy the area west of Harris Field. In quick order, the most attractive of the plans had the single-sheet rink place adjacent to the commuter rail tracks and Harris Field, about 90 parking spaces with three sports fields occupying the remainder of the land.

Steven Sefton, Perkins&Will

The two-level 45,900 square-foot facility would top off around 35 feet tall. The rink’s program would be quite modest with locker rooms that would be available for hockey and teams playing at Harris Field. The site will also allow for a three sports field configuration with a limited amount of overlap. It would take 15 months to build – the shortest time frame of the three schemes – at a total cost of $20.3 million with a $2.25 million credit from the Middle and High School Building project.

“There’s a myriad of opportunities with this design that we think we could really create a high-performing facility in the future. And then ultimately it’s the most cost-effective solution that can be phased easily,” said Stefton.

Checkoway said while the committee does have a preference on design, it will be necessary to “at some point figures out a way to finance it.”

“This [meeting] is really about holding a place for a potential new rink at some point in the future,” said Checkoway.

But for many of the 100 residents on the virtual meeting, the topic on the top of their agenda was finding some way to place five tennis courts on the site. Belmont High was once the home of ten courts – located on the northeast side of the existing building – before construction began on the new Middle and High School.

A decision in 2017 by the Middle and High School Building Committee in consultation with Perkins&Will (the architects of the new school) eliminated the courts in favor of new fields and parking on the site. In January 2020, the School Committee reiterated the earlier action with a promise to add courts at the nearby Winn Brook Playground.

Dash noted the select board and school committee devised a compromise in which an extra court would be built at the Winn Brook to allow the varsity tennis teams a “home” facility, albeit without changing and restrooms. The Community Reinvestment Committee will present a proposal to Town Meeting in June to pay for a single court at the playground for a total of five.

Not feeling heard

But even with a partial solution at the Winn Brook, “there are a lot of tennis players in town, tennis parents that feel disenfranchised,” said Select Board member Mark Paolillo.

Those advocating a return of courts to the school’s site gravitated towards two possible options, one of which would reduce the number of parking spaces from 90 to approximately 20 and install the courts close to Concord Avenue.

The School Committee’s Mike Crowley said with the need to deal with the climate crisis and for more sustainable approaches to transportation, “I don’t know that I want to see those students driving to school. So I’m looking at that space, I’m seeing tennis court potential.”

Planning Board Chair Stephen Pinkerton was then recognized who said while “it’s aspirational” to limit student driving, the reality is if those drivers are coming and if they can’t find parking at the school, they will on side streets.

Any attempt to reduce parking would require tampering with the agreement between the school district and the Planning Board on parking at the new school. As part of the Site Planning Approval encompassing the entire project, an agreement was reached where the project would have 400 parking spaces with 90 of those spaces located west of Harris Field, a settlement Pinkerton said was hammered out with numerous parties – residents from nearby neighborhoods, transportation groups – involving long and at times contentious dialogue.

In an apparent compromise that would return the high school tennis teams on campus, Select Board member Mark Paolillo raised the point of the need for a junior varsity baseball field west of the campus.

“Can we program around JV baseball so that we can get the tennis courts on the campus,” said Paolillo, noting the popularity of tennis and the removal of half the courts’ town-wide in the past decade.

“It seems strange to me that there are junior varsity fields on the campus and yet we can’t get a varsity sport on the campus and yet we can’t get a varsity sport on the campus,” said resident Lou Miller.

Town and school officials said removing baseball isn’t that simple due to the lack of an appropriately-sized baseball field in town. Jon Marshall, assistant town administrator and recreation director, said moving the JV team to another field “would have a ripple effect” on the high school and town sports teams as it would require altering small diamonds into “90-foot fields” – referring to the number of feet between bases on the standard adult playing grounds – which would affect the playing choices for regional and town baseball teams.

After the committee voted to OK its favorite scheme, it appears a formally installed working group to established to find answers to financing, parking, and land use will be a result of the meeting.