We can launch a telescope a million miles beyond Earth’s orbit, and receive images from 13.6 billion light years away.
We ought to be able to figure out how to build a school without uprooting a town treasure.
Granted, Westport is not NASA. But we’ve got more than our share of smart minds in town.
James Webb space telescope.
If some human beings can overcome problems like how to unfurl mirrors in space, protect them from the sun’s light and heat, and send commands across unfathomable distances of darkness, others ought to be able to solve the dilemma of where to put a building, baseball diamond or some construction equipment.
This isn’t rocket science.
As Westport confronts the shouldn’t-be-daunting issue of how to keep a 20-year-old garden and preserve that, thanks to stupendous volunteer effort and sweat equity, has increased biodiversity, boosted Westport on its path toward Net Zero, and raised produce for hungry Fairfield County neighbors — and at the same time brought joy, comfort and a sense of community to hundreds of Westporters, from tots to 90s — we need to tap the talents, creativity and energy of all our residents.
Our town is filled with architects, engineers, contractors, environmentalists, sports management professionals, educators, financiers, non-profit executives and more.
Every day, they face challenges. Every day, they devise solutions.
Let’s put our differences aside. Let’s put our heads together. Let’s grow — as the 100-plus Community Gardeners, and thousands of friends urge — the garden and the school together.
Westport Community Gardens and Long Lots Preserve. (Drone photo/Franco Fellah)
Here are a few things to think about:
How big a footprint does the new school actually need? Can it be vertical, rather than horizontal? To those who say an elementary school should be one story, well … Kings Highway. Saugatuck. Greens Farms. The old Bedford (now Town Hall).
Do we really need to include Stepping Stones preschool (currently located at Coleytown Elementary)? Why is that a given? Is there somewhere else it can go, lessening the size?
If a Babe Ruth baseball diamond is crucial, where else could it go? How about on the roof of the new school? Union City, New Jersey has one. Other types of athletic fields have been built on rooftops too, including Brown University.
Here’s more outside-the-box (that box being the Community Gardens) thinking:
Baseball could partner with (or rent from) Greens Farms Academy. It’s diamond is unused on weekends. Could Babe Ruth play ball there?
Greens Farms Academy baseball diamond.
The town owns land just west of The Saugatuck co-op housing, on Bridge Street. For decades, it was a playing field for what was then Saugatuck Elementary School.
There is also plenty of land at the 40-acre Fairfield County Hunt Club. Would they want to sell or rent part of it? We won’t know until we ask.
Then there’s this: The Community Gardens and Long Lots Preserve comprise nearly 4 acres. A typical baseball field is 4.5 acres.
Instead of relocating what’s already there to another, as-yet-undetermined site, find that location now — and put the baseball diamond there instead.
One plan shows a baseball field on the current site (left) of the Community Gardens …
Good people can certainly differ. But in the 10 weeks since “06880” first broke the news that the Community Gardens and Preserve may be “supplanted” by the Long Lots project, hundreds of Westporters have spoken in favor of retaining them.
They span the political spectrum. They are all ages. Some have been here for decades; others just moved in. Some are gardeners; many are not. Some are parents of Long Lots children.
In all the comments on this blog, on Westport Journal, and in public meetings, I can’t recall one person (other than members of the Long Lots School Building Committee) who has said: “We should replace the Gardens and Preserve with a baseball field, or the school itself.”
If you want that, please make your voice heard.
If you don’t, please put on your thinking cap.
We’re not asking you to design the James Webb Telescope.
All we need is a way for a garden and school to share space.
Comm
… while another shows a new school there.
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