NORWALK, Conn. – The newly presented Oak Hills Park Master Plan differs from what was originally predicted – a driving range paid for by a developer with no cost to Norwalk – because the thinking on the topic evolved, Oak Hills Park Authority (OHPA) Chairman Clyde Mount said Thursday.
The plan outlines substantial changes to the park at an expected cost of $4.5 million. That includes a significant change in the cost of building a driving range, although the authority said when the process began more than a year ago that would be financed by a private developer.
Mount and Ad Hoc Driving Range Committee Chairman Ernie Desrochers confronted a squall of predictable resistance at Thursday’s monthly meeting, where Diane Cece criticized the process of developing a master plan and long-time critic Paul Cantor zeroed in on the finances.
“You said in the past that the driving range was going to be financed by the developer,” Cantor said. “You completely flip-flopped. Could (winning bidder) Total Driving Range Solutions not get the financing it needed? … Will you pay them to construct and operate the driving range? Will tax payers bear the risk if it’s not generating the income needed to cover the cost?”
“The main reason that we have, in your words, ‘flip-flopped,’ but have presented a different avenue is that we believe the city should own the range,” Mount said. “We believe Oak Hills Park should own the range. We believe it‘s better for the park, that it’s better for the residents of this city to own the range than to turn it over to somebody for a 20-year lease. That’s our belief as the Oak Hills Park Authority. We think it’s the prudent decision. You may disagree; the whole city may disagree.”
The Request for Proposals, drawn up when Bob Virgulak was OHPA chairman, specified a 10-year contract with the winning bidder.
“We were asked to put together a plan; we did,” Mount said. “We got far down the road and said wait a minute, it makes more sense for us to own it. We can make more money. We control it. We can do more teaching. We can sell more balls. We can do more promos that are both buckets of balls and golf. That’s why. It’s not a flip-flop. It’s a change and we are presenting what we think is the best plan, not what was decided by maybe another chairman before us that that was how we were going to do it.”
Criticism also came from within. OHPA member Elsa Peterson Obuchowski said she could not make it to the May 22 public hearing – rescheduled from May 15 – and presented four comments and a question.
For one thing, Obuchowski asked that the language that would protect the woods be firmed up to ensure nothing would be built there in the future. Then she, too, asked about the financial arrangements.
“I don’t see in there where the master plan draft states how much money is going to be paid to Total Driving Range Solutions, whether it’s in the form of a flat fee or a percentage of the construction costs or some other arrangement for them to be paid,” she said.
Desrochers had told her in an email exchange that those things would be negotiated at prevailing industry rates, she said.
“It seems to me that what we are doing is asking the city to put up $4.5 million and then Total Driving Range Solutions would then negotiate how much they are going to be paid. They’d already know how much money we’d have,” she said.
“Part of the problem with any construction project is you don’t know exactly what it is actually going to cost until you actually get your final bids based on your final working drawings,” Desrochers said. “In order to get your final working drawings and everything you would probably have to be into this thing for a few hundred thousand dollars.”
Everyone involved had been asked to come up with a best guess estimate, he said.
“We don’t want to be in situation like the restaurant, when it was budgeted to be built for $1.1 million and they ended up spending $2.5 million. We want to avoid that at all costs,” Desrochers said. “With regard to what Total Driving Range Solutions would be paid if they were to develop this thing, we haven’t gotten that far yet. We are just working over total industry standards of what it would be. It is the best guess.”
Oak Hills Park Executive Director Shelley Guyer offered a clarification.
“The city is not going to give us money until we have contract in place that has the finite numbers in it so they know exactly what we’re looking for,” he said.
After the authority approves the master plan, which will take place after public input, the plan goes to the Planning Commission, Desrochers said. If the Planning Commission approves it, the plan goes to the Common Council. If the Council approves the plan, that wouldn’t mean it was approving the expenditure. That would come later, he said.
Oak Hills takes in $1.5 million in fees yearly, he said. All of the city’s other parks combined took in $900,000 last year, he said. The Veterans Park master plan is expected to cost $13 million to implement, he said. The Cranbury Park master plan is expected to cost $4.3 million to implement.
“But in our master plan, unlike the other ones, we have to actually go through and economically justify the numbers that are done. That’s why there are the 16 to 17 pages in there of economic projections,” he said.
In the last three years the city has spent $4.5 million to $6 million on open space and recreation, he said.
After the meeting, Desrochers told NancyOnNorwalk that Total Driving Range Solutions would have a construction management contract if the city finances the driving range. The city stands to make much more money if it owns the range, though there is more risk involved that way, he said.
“One of the things we tried to do in all the projections is to be as conservative as possible,” he said. “What we tried to do with the range is to have it stand on itself by just golf balls and not count on other revenue sources like you would get from teaching and that sort of thing. Because if you do it properly, you can put yourself in the position where you could pay for it and then make a lot more money on top of it. I mean, that’s what they do in Stamford.”
The plan is somewhat misunderstood, he said.
“Everybody thinks it’s just a driving range, but it’s not. It’s a complete golf school,” he said. “So there are golf balls you would charge to hit and then there’s lesson revenue that you would generate out of there.”
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