By Nancy Guenther Chapman
NORWALK, Conn. – No one will consider the latest driving range proposed for Oak Hills Park an eyesore if it gets built, Shelly Guyer said.
Guyer, the interim executive director of the golf course, said the driving range is proposed for a wooded section bordered by Chipping Lane and North Taylor Avenue. That is one of the major differences between this proposal and one about 10 years ago, which drew a lot of opposition from neighbors.
“We believe this area is kind of the least intrusive overall,” he said. “The plan in 2002 had the range going in where 16th and 17th holes are. You would be able to see it from Fillow Street – I guess people might think that would be an eyesore.”
The other major difference between today’s plan and the previous one is that the city would invest no money in the range.
Beyond that, details are few.
“I don’t really know too much about what they want to do,” said Gerald Foley, the city’s purchasing agent.
Foley was asked to draft a request for proposal (RFP) but felt he did not have enough information. So he provided a draft with little to go on other than previous proposals put out by the Oak Hills Park Authority, and told authority Chairman Bob Virgulak to think it out more.
Foley said the range is behind the employees’ parking lot, but, “I can’t even tell you proximity, what angle it’s facing.”
He has also told authority members that their desire to have the driving range open by spring was probably unrealistic. “That’s too tight, a developer might say,” he said.
Construction at the proposed site would not affect golfers, Guyer said. “The good thing is it’s away from the golf, so it’s something they can be working on while the golf course is open,” he said. “Even if we can’t have it ready April 1, it’s still something that could potentially be here sometime during the golf season.”
Authority members are hoping for 30 to 40 golf stalls in a double-decker arrangement, with the balls being hit north, toward Chipping Lane, as shown in the PDF attached below. People in a few of the houses on Chipping Lane or North Taylor might see part of the driving range, but no one on a major road would, he said.
Some people have objected that putting a driving range in that spot will destroy the trails that wind through the woods. “There will still be trails around it,” Guyer said. “We’ll still have some areas around the golf course that people would potentially be able to walk on.”
The trails have been poorly maintained in recent years, he said. There are no trail markers.
The authority plans to put out an RFP to see if someone is interested in building and operating a driving range on the hilly terrain.
“The strategy right now is to try and find someone who would be willing to build it and run it at no cost to the park or to the city, and then, at the end of whatever this lease period is, would turn it back to us,” Guyer said. “We would share in the revenues for the lease period. We would get something out of it; don’t know how much obviously.”
“We’ll find out once the RFP goes out,” he said.
Would a company be willing to work under those conditions? “It would depend on how much it would cost, what the projections are on the profit,” he said.
He hopes to have the RFP out in mid-January, with a hoped-for deadline for proposals in February. When the plan is more fully developed, the authority will hold a public hearing,.
“I believe that’s the appropriate time to open to the public because you know where you’re going,” Guyer said. “Hopefully, we’ll get some valid responses back.”
Oak Hills proposed driving range
Leave a Reply
You must Register or Login to post a comment.