A busted pipe at Southold Town Hall during this winter’s brutal cold spell contributed to Southold missing a deadline for a state grant of nearly $1 million for improvements at Jean Cochran Park, The Suffolk Times has learned.

The pipe burst Sunday, Feb. 8, forcing officials to relocate the Town Board meetings scheduled for Monday, Feb. 9 — the same day the grant application was due. Supervisor Al Krupski and two board members told The Suffolk Times the disruption contributed to the application not being submitted on time.

Southold had been seeking up to $900,000 through the state’s Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, with a 10% local match that would have brought the project close to $1 million. The proposal called for adding permanent bathrooms, expanding and paving the parking area, installing fitness equipment and potentially removing the park’s aging roller hockey rink.

Now, officials are weighing a scaled-back, three-year plan for the Peconic park. The new plan would rely more heavily on the town’s park and recreation fund and work that can be handled in-house.

“The Parks and Recreation Committee has been discussing the scope of improvements that were included in a grant application that was ultimately not funded,” said Southold Town Councilwoman Anne Smith at a June 2 work session. “Since then, committee members met with the comptroller’s office to better understand the park and recreation fund and how it can be used moving forward.” 

Ms. Smith said the committee is considering a simpler plan that would use the fund strategically, rather than depleting it all at once. The fund receives small deposits over time and earns interest.

The revised plan centers on three long-running issues at the park: the lack of permanent bathrooms, an unsafe parking lot and the deteriorating roller hockey rink. Recreation supervisor Janet Douglass said the parking lot can be difficult and unsafe to navigate.

“We have a very active park and no bathroom facilities other than the use of port-a-pottys that we have to pay for on a monthly basis to get cleaned,” Ms. Douglass said. “We have a parking lot that is unsafe to navigate for people who are able-bodied, never mind people with mobility issues. Our fields at that specific location are so heavily used, that its putting so much pressure that we’re damaging the fields because we don’t have the ability to rotate them off to provide proper irrigation.”

Officials are also considering removing the roller hockey rink, reseeding the area and improving irrigation so heavily used fields can be rotated more effectively. North Fork United Soccer Club is among the organizations that use the fields, along with other community groups and recreational users.

The rink was part of the original grant discussion earlier this year, when Ms. Douglass told the board it had “seen better days” and that the town needed to make a long-term decision about its future. Rebuilding it from the ground up, she said at the time, did not make sense given the park’s more immediate needs.

“The can has been kicked down the road,” Mr. Krupski said. 

Town maintenance supervisor Erick Haas said the town should consider a three-year capital improvement plan for the park. He said town crews could handle some portions of the project, including work near the parking lot and removal of the hockey rink, while officials continue looking for outside funding opportunities.

That approach would allow the town to move ahead with some work without waiting for another large grant, while preserving park and recreation fund money for later phases.

Officials also discussed needed repairs at the tennis courts on Fishers Island, which have received preliminary patches but remain in poor condition.

“It’s like nailing Jello to a wall,” Mr. Haas said, describing the patchwork repairs.

A revised plan for Cochran Park is expected to be discussed at the next Town Board work session June 16.

The post Burst pipe derailed Southold’s $900K Cochran Park grant application appeared first on The Suffolk Times.

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