As Marsden Vote Approaches, Questions Resurface About Future of Mashashimuet Park Upgrades

As the debate over acquiring the Marsden Street properties has consumed the Sag Harbor community over the past eight-plus months, another important issue related to providing access to adequate athletic facilities for school district sports teams has been waiting in the wings to be addressed.

Since September, a proposed $13.5 million capital improvement project at Mashashimuet Park has been put on hold, and many residents are eager for an update on the fate of that plan.

The district put the Mashashimuet Park capital improvement plan vote on pause in the fall, when it began the process of trying to acquire the Marsden Street lots, because the acquisition of the lots could potentially affect what the district would seek to do at the park.

The district has been adamant that it does not have any specific development plans in place for the Marsden lots should they be acquired, but says instead that it will seek community input based on what the district has identified as top facility needs.

However, providing more space for middle school, JV and varsity teams, and improving the overall quality of the athletic facilities available to the district has been publicly identified as a high priority need in the district, meaning the Marsden lots, if acquired, could potentially one day be developed into an athletic field. If those properties are ultimately developed into an athletic field, in theory, the district could reduce the scope — and the cost — of what needs to be done at the park.

While all of those situations remain hypothetical, what is not up for debate is that providing quality athletic facilities on par with what is standard at most school districts in the area will be challenging and costly for the district because of its small geographic footprint. Which is why the district has been intrigued by a possibility that has been talked about in the last few months — a possible plan for Southampton Town to purchase development rights at the park that could potentially greatly reduce or entirely cover the cost of necessary facility upgrades there. If the town moved forward with that plan, it would be funded through its Community Preservation Fund program.

It is intriguing but complicated, and still in the early stages, according to several people involved.

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman spoke about the potential of a partnership between the town and the park earlier this week, but emphasized that a lot remains up in the air.

“I am cautiously optimistic that there are development rights on that property of significant value,” he said. “It really is up to the appraisers to determine those values.”

He added that while there are signs that the value of those rights could be “meaningful,” the situation is complicated because the development rights are owned by the Russell Sage Foundation and not by the Mashashimuet Park board. Working out the logistics of purchasing those rights and then finding the right framework to apply them to covering the cost of facility upgrades — which would be a huge win for the district from a cost-savings perspective — involves a lot of different factors.

Mashashimuet Park Board President Janine Rayano was not immediately available for comment earlier this week.

It’s a situation the district will certainly keep an eye on, because regardless of whether or not the vote to acquire the Marsden Street properties — set for Tuesday, May 16 — goes through, and even if the community eventually settles on and votes in favor of a development plan that would put a sports field on the Marsden lots, the district will still need to have access to the park to provide facilities for many of its sports teams, including, most notably, baseball and softball.

From the district’s perspective, Superintendent Jeff Nichols said they are currently in “a holding pattern” until the May 16 vote on Marsden, but he added that the district has been in communication with the park board.

“We had a meeting with the park board negotiating committee where we had basically talked about a scaled down version of our plan with them, and we had said we were sort of waiting until the May 16 vote,” Nichols said earlier this week. “But we said we’d extend [our lease] for another year, and we intend to do that at the next meeting.”

The district will not agree to signing anything longer than a one-year lease with the park until a plan for facility upgrades is developed and agreed to, at which time it will commit to signing a long-term lease agreement of 20 years or more. If the town ultimately cannot find a way to purchase development rights from the park with CPF money, the district will need to go out to the community and ask them to approve a bond to cover the cost of necessary upgrades there.

Nichols said the district was close to signing another one-year lease with the park. The current one-year lease of $221,246 expires next month, and after working out what Nichols said are a few final details, the district will agree to a new lease at an annual cost of $226,777, which represents a 2.5-percent increase.

Nichols said he expected the lease to be signed by the next school board meeting, set for May 22.