A foundation that proposed building a regional field house in Manchester has scrapped the idea – and its $3.5 million pledge – after the project failed to garner enough voter support on Town Meeting Day last Tuesday.
The Right Track Foundation Inc. decided to abandon its efforts when the proposed sporting, recreation and programming venue couldn’t even get the support of Manchester voters. The 67,000-square-foot Northshire Community Field House was envisioned as a facility shared by towns that contributed to its $14 million construction.
The project, which sought voters’ non-binding input, got a thumbs-down in five of the eight towns that placed it on their election day agenda last week: Danby, Dorset, Manchester, Rupert and Sunderland.
“Right now, the plans are to shelve the project,” said Bill Drunsic, spokesperson for the foundation. “No good reason to proceed.”
Drunsic said his family’s foundation has no new plans where to put the money it intended for the field house.
Officials from the biggest towns that explored the project – Manchester, Dorset and Danby – said the field house didn’t get voter endorsement due to factors such as its breadth, lack of indoor pool and membership fees.
The facility’s proposed design featured a 227-meter running track, 45-foot rock climbing tower and fitness center.
It also included a couple of multipurpose rooms, which could host community events or classes, as well as three multipurpose courts for basketball, volleyball, pickleball and futsal, a type of indoor soccer. The courts could be converted into space for other sports, such as gymnastics and baseball training.
Manchester, which would have owned and operated the field house, was estimated to shoulder $3 million of the construction cost. This was calculated under a formula based on each participating town’s grand list, population and distance from the facility.
The size of the field house’s design may have been a major contributor to the lack of voter support, said Manchester Town Manager John O’Keefe.
He said regionwide projects also have always been a challenge in southern Vermont.
Dorset voters would have been more supportive if the proposal had included an indoor pool, said Town Manager Rob Gaiotti.
The project cost also brought up discussions of a bond vote on a facility that was not going to be in the town itself, he said.
Danby residents were put off by the cost of the town’s potential contribution and the membership fees, said town Selectboard Chair Bradley Bender. Besides shouldering almost half a million dollars toward the construction cost in the next 40 years, Bender said residents would still have had to pay a membership fee to use the field house.
“It was a reasonably expensive proposition,” he said. “Typically, when a town provides something, there are no more out-of-pocket costs.”
He said Danby residents were also disappointed that the field house design didn’t include an indoor pool.
Project developers said they explored the possibility of a swimming pool, but decided that it was going to cost too much. This would have led to either higher membership rates or higher operating costs that would affect the facility’s sustainability, according to the project website.
Towns that received voter endorsement for the field house were Landgrove, Peru and Winhall.
Londonderry has already decided to place the issue on the agenda for its Town Meeting Day on April 30. Town Administrator Shane O’Keefe said Monday that he expects the topic of whether to keep the field house on the agenda to come up in a forthcoming selectboard meeting.
