Stockbridge — Town officials are faced with a dilemma, and their decision will determine the future of the town’s historic Pine Street tennis and basketball courts.
The Select Board took up the matter on July 24, opting to wait until the full group was seated in September to determine the issue. Following the resignation of former Select Board member Patrick White on June 10, voters will choose one of two candidates, Jorja Marsden or Sally Underwood-Miller, in an August 26 special election to assume the open position on the dais.
A couple of weeks ago, Town Administrator Michael Canales reached out to residents and park users for input on the athletic facility situated on land owned by residential psychiatric treatment facility Austen Riggs Center (Riggs) but leased to the municipality for 99 years, with 44 years remaining on that agreement. That contract required the town to maintain the site which Canales admits has not been carried out. A recent estimate to rebuild the tennis courts came in at $215,000, and a possible $500,000 is needed to restore the site.
Factoring into the decision are existing courts and public facilities at Town Hall on Main Street, just a few minutes away, as well as at Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington that could provide relief should the Pine Street facility close.
Polls explained
In a July 14 correspondence, Canales asked townspeople to weigh in on how their tax dollars should be used to move forward: restore the courts and continue the lease; demolish the courts and return the land to Austen Riggs; repurpose the space into a park with concrete chess or checker tables; or explore “other creative alternatives for the site.”
Materials attached to the evening meeting’s agenda reflected 13 responses, with just a few respondents opting to return the courts back to Riggs.
Those letters can be found here.
In a July 24 statement handed out at the meeting, Canales found that “most residents expressed a desire to see the site remain an active community asset” with differing opinions as to what that property should morph into. The most popular response involved an iteration housing pickleball courts, with that sport mentioned “more than any other activity,” he said. Other comments reflected changing the Pine Street center into a community garden or park with benches.
Canales said some folks expressed “nostalgia” for the 50-year-old park that provided their first tennis experiences. Underwood-Miller was one of those students who learned the sport at the Pine Street facility, calling it “a very special court” but one that has degraded into “a bloody eyesore.”
“The fact that it’s a quieter court, especially for those of us who are a little bit older … it’s really nice to be able to hear each other now without cars and motorcycles and every other thing going by,” she said. “It’s such a nice, quiet court to play on. I would be perfectly happy to share it with pickleball people, but I would love to see the two courts be restored to where we can play on it again.”
Second-home owner Patty Caya also conducted a poll as to what residents wanted to do with the Pine Street courts, receiving a whopping 80 responses. The Caya poll showed that 34.7 percent of respondents preferred restoring the tennis and basketball courts and continuing the lease, followed by “exploring other alternatives” (21.3 percent), “repurposing the space into a passive park” (20 percent), and “demolishing the courts to return the land to Riggs” (18.7 percent.) Those responses included several comments suggesting the town consider dedicated pickleball courts.
A copy of that poll’s results can be found here.
Riggs responds
A July 17 correspondence from Riggs COO/CFO Chauncey Collins stated the organization’s preference to terminate the lease. He mentioned the $10,000 cost to the town to remove the court equipment, regrade and reseed the site using Department of Public Works employees and tools, and offered a $16,000 payment in lieu of taxes to offset those charges.
In the statement, Collins commented the courts, in their current state, pose “safety and potential liability concerns” and Riggs “is also considering alternative uses for the property should the Town elect not to restore and maintain the courts as required under the terms of the lease.”
Two options are possible
Canales boiled down the path forward to two suggested options for the Select Board’s consideration. The first involves removing the existing Pine Street courts and installing a modular net system at the Main Street courts that would allow pickleball, tennis, or volleyball on the three courts, with one court being dedicated to seasonal pickleball while also serving as a skating rink in the winter.
The second option would retain the two Pine Street courts for tennis plus the basketball court while dedicating one Main Street court for pickleball and using the flexibility of the net system for multi-sports at two Main Street courts.
Details on that net system can be found here.
Touting the second option, Canales said that choice would expand athletic options in town while leaving the Pine Street courts “as a quieter, less-trafficked facility,” words also expressed by some poll respondents. This option would require a Town Meeting vote to appropriate the funds needed to bring the project to fruition. If that doesn’t happen, officials would use the remaining project funds to demolish the Pine Street courts, restoring and returning the site to Riggs.
“It’s not going to be cheap no matter what we do,” said Select Board member Ernest “Chuck” Cardillo.
Next steps
Despite existing signage to the contrary, town courts aren’t restricted to just residents but are made available to all persons, Canales said, adding that the inaccurate signs will be removed.
Select Board discussion pointed to delaying further action until September, after the town’s special election, with Collins—who attended the session—confirming he would wait for that action. The first meeting of the new Select Board is slated for September 4 at 6:30 p.m. In the meantime, the town welcomes more feedback via a Survey Monkey poll to come.
“What we’ve laid out is, by next summer, it’s either going to be fixed or removed,” Canales said of the Pine Street facility.
