The town’s highest elected official on Tuesday distanced himself from a resident’s proposal to build a new police station where a Saxe Middle School baseball diamond now stands, saying instead that a parking lot could go there.
The New Canaan YMCA “has a horrible deficit of parking,” First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during a regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen.
Saying that the Saxe baseball field could be built anew at Kiwanis Park, Moynihan said the question facing New Canaan now is “whether or not the town wants accommodate the YMCA, which definitely needs more parking and whether or not people would be agreeable, because that baseball diamond right now is in the worst possible position it could be.”
“There is no parking,” Moynihan said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “You can’t park at the YMCA.”
The idea appeared to catch Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams off-guard.
“So you are not now talking about new police station at Saxe, but additional parking for the YMCA?” Williams said.
Saying he loves the YMCA and that he knows Moynihan is a member, Williams noted that the organization “had a big spend to do a renovation” recently.
“They should have thought about parking,” Williams said. “But for us to take Saxe fields and turn it into a parking lot, I am not supporting it.”
“For the same reasons I would be opposed to putting a new police station at Saxe field, I would be opposed to putting a parking lot—just a parking lot, which probably is even worse—at Saxe fields,” he said.
Devereaux also pooh-poohed the idea, saying, “I think the idea of putting a parking lot where the baseball diamond is is almost as objectionable as a building there.”
She added, “I also think in my experience it is unusual for us to be pushing an idea about a field.”
Moynihan responded that “ it is our obligation.”
“We have a diamond that is in a terrible position,” he said. “You cannot park there.”
To Williams’s observation that he had “never heard anybody complain about that baseball field, Moynihan said people have complained about a lack of parking that leaves them no option but to simply pull off of a state road (Route 124).
Moynihan also distanced himself from a proposal he’d shared about building a new police station on the site. Municipal bodies have agreed for years that the current New Canaan Police Department headquarters on South Avenue needs to be renovated, work now estimated to cost about $10 million. Former Police Commissioner Stuart Sawabini recently proposed the idea of building a new station on the Saxe field adjacent to the YMCA, and Moynihan by way of sharing the idea said that baseball diamond could be replicated at Kiwanis Park.
The first selectmen in public meetings since then has said the two ideas—relocating the Saxe baseball diamond to Kiwanis and building a new police station there—are not connected. In criticizing news stories reporting on the matter, Moynihan has said discussions he led about the Saxe field during budget hearings last week had nothing to do with the police station proposal that he’d broached during a press briefing earlier in the month—and he reiterated that assertion during Tuesday’s meeting.
Even so, Moynihan can be heard during a Jan. 22 budget hearing not only peppering district officials with questions about “the need” to keep the Saxe field, but also asking Williams specifically about the idea of building a new police station there.
“Your objection to Saxe is the vista?” Moynihan asked during the Jan. 22 meeting (audio embedded below). “Losing the vista?”
Williams responded yes, that he would “hate to see” the sight of “young kids running around playing sports on verdant green grass” spoiled.
Devereaux also had been critical of the proposal to build a new police station at Saxe baseball field.
Moynihan, who has discussed but never endorsed the Sawabini proposal, said Tuesday that his own preference is to install the police at a downtown office building that New Canaan would need to purchase. In the past, Moynihan has said that with some new construction, the “Covia building” at Elm and Grove Streets also could accommodate the Board of Education, which now rents office space downtown.
“I am waiting for the numbers to tell us what is the best option,” he said.
Upcoming Article:
“First Selectman: Town Should Consider Building Senior Housing Over Saxe Baseball Diamond”.
Please, please…just give it a break and let our children enjoy the baseball diamond where it is. I am shaking my head every time I see “First Selectman” in the headline.
It would be a travesty if Mr. Moynihan’s position were to prevail in this discussion. Green space matters.
Please. Rather than take away green space from a town entry vista with either a parking lot or a new police headquarters, let’s get the government focused on cutting costs. The world outside of New Canaan is transforming with digitalization, finding efficiencies and improving customer experiences. Is P&Z responsible for allowing such growth of an institution in a residential neighborhood — the YMCA — that there is now a “horrible deficit of parking”?
So, the First Selectman wants to take public land for a private entity. Just wow!
Uh, NO!
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
Please stop the nonsense.
Oh..where’s the zero budget?
I can’t even with this man.
Remember 10 years ago when they wanted to park the school buses on the Saxe fields and there was a public out cry? Maybe our First Selectman didn’t live here then, or maybe he has a short memory.
I’ve been going to the New Canaan Y multiple times per week for almost 5 years and have never had trouble parking. Even when they are hosting a special event like a swim meet. Not sure what Moynihan is talking about. Maybe he is adapting the tactics of his idol, DJT, and just saying outrageous things to attract attention
Seems like Spencer’s Run at Waveny and “our” YMCA are being inundated by out of towners from Norwalk, Pound Ridge etc. and we have to continue supporting them by always adding more expensive solutions. Does it ever stop? Let’s work on selling or taking down our 57 properties, instead of last minute overtures that are strangling any decision making!
The Mormon church walking distance from the YMCA has 100
unused parking spaces every day !!!!
The Mormon church has not been within walking distance of the YMCA since the early-1990s.
New Canaan High School needs a new baseball stadium as their current field in Mead Park is old, inefficient and lags behind other High School facilities in Fairfield County. You can build a new baseball facility in Waveny that is easily accessible from the High School. Using the vacated Mead field, you can convert that large field into 2 diamonds; a girls softball field and a replacement for the Saxe baseball field. Much more efficient than going to Kiwanis and disrupting that park in my opinion.
With the vacated Saxe field, you can build the police station, add more parking to the YMCA or a combination of both.
Where in Waveny are you suggesting to build this facility???
Whichever, paving or building on the Saxe fields is simply not a good plan. The field area is used heavily for soccer in the fall, baseball and lacrosse in the spring and summer. New Canaan parents raised a ton of money to irrigate it. Wish our town hall could stop all these costly, non-essential schemes (move this, pave that, demolish those) and find some sensible focus.
Asphalting School Playing yards in not in the New Canaan Long Range planning document.
As a member of the Parking commission, I have never heard any complaints about parking in this area.
Election Day is November 5, 2019. I will be voting for trees, stone walls, enviable town parks, and other green spaces. And fiscal sense.
I’m with you, John.
Love the YMCA and been a member for years. But don’t they have their own grass lot in the back of their property? Here’s an idea if the YMCA needs parking: pave that field and leave the Saxe fields alone. And if they need a field, let them rent one from the Town. And same goes for using the fields for a new Police Station. The only sensible solution to the Police Station is to stay put and renovate. Let’s stop with the game of musical chairs around Town.
Excellent point
Maybe the single dumbest idea I have heard in a while that I thought the whole thing was joke at first. Taking away town property for an independent business entity to have parking? Will the YMCA then offer everyone in town free memberships? Or at least the baseball community? If there are issues with parking for the field, fine but giving nice green land away so YMCA members are more comfortable is disgusting.
How about repaving the Schoolhouse parking lot next to the police station. It belongs to the town of New Canaan…