Last month I attended a Barrington Recreation Commission workshop focused on the town’s plan to spend perhaps $1.1 million of American Rescue dollars to move a baseball field and create a new multipurpose athletic field near the western entrance to Haines Park.

Nearly everyone in attendance was a Haines Park neighbor, loaded with questions, concerns and opposition to the town’s plan. Then there were recreation and town leaders who were in favor of the plan. And then there was me.

I disagreed with everyone in the room.

I see things differently than the folks who don’t want to see a single tree fall at Haines. And I disagree with the recreation folks who want to spend more than a million dollars to create a single field perched on top of agitated neighbors who will resent the even greater presence of cars, kids and congestion in the park.

After the meeting, recreation board member TR Rimoshytus walked up to me and good-naturedly chided me to do something more than boo from the cheap seats. Come up with your own plan, he challenged me. He was right.

So the next morning I did. Here it is …

The quick overview

The town formed an ad hoc committee to study fields four years ago. Though I disagreed with just about everything they actually recommended, they did a lot of good work, including a deep dive into the youth sports needs in this town, as well as the science and opportunities of artificial turf.

They rightly conclude that the town does not have enough large, multipurpose fields to accommodate the youth soccer, lacrosse and football players in this community. The town needs at least four, ideally five, and it currently has two and a half (one overlaps with a baseball outfield).

So here’s my plan to create a network of large, multipurpose athletic fields, clustered in a section of town and connected by innovative designs.

Turf at Victory Field

This will have no direct impact on youth sports. The young kids will not be practicing or playing games on this field, unless it is a special occasion under unique circumstances.

This field would provide year-round, almost maintenance-free durability for the largest, most demanding and best athletes in town.

The football, soccer, field hockey and lacrosse teams would share equally in practices and games on the premiere field in town. Even a decade ago, this would have seemed a luxury in Rhode Island high schools. It is no longer. Nearly every Barrington away game, at both private and public schools, is played on a turf field, typically in a stadium format. The only high school I can think of that does not have a turf field is down the road in Bristol; nearly every other high school in the region plays on turf.

The new field would be virtually maintenance-free and would expand the seasons, days and hours of productive usage for hundreds of Barrington high school athletes.

Youth field at BHS

With the addition of turf at Victory Field, demand for one of the formerly premiere field locations is diminished. The large field in the northwest corner of the BHS campus, bordering the student parking lot and Upland Way (which I still remember as my varsity soccer field), would be a lightly used high school field, making it available to youth leagues in the evenings and weekends. This is large, multipurpose field number one for the youth programs.

I advocate that the school department tear out the two-generation-old chain link fence, surround it with new, attractive fencing, and create multiple entrances, including a new gate off of Upland Way. I’ll explain why in a moment …

A St. Andrew’s PILOT

When I was playing soccer in the 1980s, the town’s premiere sports complex was at St. Andrew’s School. The private school, which was nothing like it is today, allowed the town’s growing soccer program to use that large open space along Federal Road for practices and games seven days a week.

That of course changed. St. Andrew’s made deep investments in its campus, constructed new buildings, expanded its athletic programs and reserved those beautiful field spaces for its own needs. Barrington has never had a centralized collection of fields since, with the youth leagues reduced to a mishmash collection of compromised or shared fields scattered throughout town.

Everyone has seen the spectacular and vibrant St. Andrew’s campus, either up close or while passing by. Many nonprofit, tax-free educational institutions, including both private universities and K-12 schools, make Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT). The town should lobby for a different kind of PILOT with St. Andrew’s — a Partnership in Lieu of Taxes.

I’m sorry for picking on St. Andrew’s, but here are the facts. The town has a significant need for field space, and St. Andrew’s has a lot of space. It basically owns every square foot of real estate on the north side of Federal Road, all the way from the Wampanoag Trail to Middle Highway. It also owns about a dozen off-campus properties, which it uses as housing for faculty. And it pays no taxes on any of it — not on the campus or the dozen or so off-campus residences.

Town leaders should begin a dialogue with St. Andrew’s to reach a usage agreement for at least one of its large, multipurpose fields along Federal Road. This would be multipurpose field number two for youth sports.

New Federal Road field

While it is negotiating with St. Andrew’s, the town should also press for a $1 a year lease for the large, open space on the opposite side (south side) of Federal Road. That sunken space currently has a couple of soccer goals on it, only because the Barrington Soccer Association had no other choice.

Because of the shortage of fields, and because youth lacrosse was given preference this spring, soccer was pressed into using that sub-standard space, courtesy of St. Andrew’s, for weeknight practices.

I’m not an environmental architect, but I’m guessing that space could be improved and designed to be a high-quality facility, with a large multipurpose field that drains into a retention pond, and with a small parking lot at the eastern end, close to Upland Way.

This would be multipurpose field three for youth sports.

St. Andrew’s Farm Field

The good news is this field already exists. It is the best field in town, with a quality playing surface, easy access, vast spectator space and a convenient parking lot. This is multipurpose field four for youth sports.

Barrington Middle School

I’ll never understand how the school department ripped apart a collection of decent multipurpose sports fields when constructing its new middle school, then replaced them with a large field dedicated to youth sports and a second field that overlaps with a baseball field. It’s subtraction by addition. That second field is useful whenever baseball isn’t playing — which is rare.

Though it would be painful to do this right now, so soon after the $64 million complex was built, I suggest ripping out that baseball field and moving it somewhere else in town (more on that later).

If this ever happens, these would be large multipurpose fields five and six for youth sports.

Connect them together

If you can visualize what we’ve now created, it’s a collection of six high quality multipurpose fields, all with convenient parking, all located within about a half-mile radius of each other near the entrance to town and close to the town’s two biggest schools.

To pull this all together, the town should work with the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (DOT) to link all these facilities together with safe pedestrian infrastructure. Specifically, this means enhanced crosswalks throughout the network; new sidewalks along the length of both Federal Road and Upland Way; and prominent signage to promote walkability and safe speeds.

At the eastern end of the network, someone could easily move between the three fields (at the high school, at St. Andrew’s and along Federal Road), parking in one location and quickly walking to any of the three, including the new Federal Road parking lot and Upland Way crosswalk. Of course all of the above improvements benefit everyone in town, not just the youth athletes, with major benefits for the many students who walk or bike to each of those schools.

Haines Park

Responding to the pressure to create more field space, the town has focused its attention on Haines Park, with a proposal on the launching pad right now to spend about $1.1 million creating a new multipurpose field near the northwest entrance to the park.

After listening to the Haines Park neighbors last week, I oppose that plan even more than I did before the meeting. First of all, it seems like a steep price to create a single field. But more than that, it will likely exacerbate the biggest problem with the town’s approach to Haines.

Now boasting a 30-year agreement to control the activities and maintenance within the state park, the town should consider a deeper vision for the whole of that space. Listening to some of the neighbors, I was led to believe that is one of the pristine, natural spaces to be found anywhere. I’m not buying it.

Haines is a forgotten woodland, largely overgrown and inaccessible, perhaps the least impressive in the entire Rhode Island park system. It has been neglected for years, with no sustained effort to make it accessible to the greater public. Contrast it with Colt State Park, which offers countless picnic areas, wooded walking or biking trails, a fitness trail, vast open spaces and visual beauty. Haines has very little to offer, other than a few short stretches to walk the dog.

In response to various field stresses over the years, the town has received permission to cut a small swath of ball fields into the state park. Two baseball fields and a softball field lie close to a few open spaces of grass that have been pressed into service as multipurpose fields, though the park itself was never designed to handle what it is being asked to handle — hundreds of cars driving through, dropping off and picking up kids, or parking for hours.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is shoving as much infrastructure as possible into one end of the park and leaving the rest untouched, to grow wild and unkempt even longer. A few of the Haines Park neighbors have extremist view points and seem opposed to cutting a single tree of any kind for any reason. Many others, however, are worried about things that any of us would worry about if we lived a few feet from Haines — congestion, disruption, noise, safety, etc. They’re right to worry.

The town continues to try to build big ball fields right on top of their houses, which by the way, are the only residences really bordering Haines, as Washington Road (sans houses) and the East Bay Bike Path form the majority of the park’s boundaries.

I suggest moving away from the spaces closest to the neighbors and laying out fields and all their activity more in the interior of the park, with a natural, vegetated buffer between the homes, the access road and the actual ball fields. This is where I would construct the baseball field that has been removed from the middle school. I would also enforce no-parking rules along the entire Haines Park roadway, while creating one large, environmentally sensitive gravel parking lot at the western end of the park.

I would make other access, pedestrian and safety upgrades as well, such as: a new pathway/crosswalk from the boat ramp parking area (a vast, underutilized space for overflow parking), across the bike path and into the western end of the park; a footbridge over the stream, allowing easy east-west passage through the park; an understated fitness trail running through the entire park; and more great ideas from people with more landscape knowledge and talents than I.

For those worried about baseball and softball being neglected in this whole scenario, don’t. As I see it, Haines and Chianese become the two central complexes for baseball and softball in Barrington, almost entirely devoted to those two sports (while leaving more than 50% of Haines in a natural, vegetated state).

How to get it done

I have no idea what this will cost. Obviously it’ll be more than a few nickels. Yet I believe it can be accomplished through a combination of federal ‘Rescue’ dollars, a taxpayer-funded bond, and state and federal grants. It may take 10 years to realize the complete vision.

More importantly, it will take collaboration between a lot of people. Consider the groups who must work together to make this happen — the Barrington Town Manager’s office, the Barrington Town Council, the Barrington School Committee and school administration, the Barrington Recreation Department and Commission, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and St. Andrew’s School.

The town government would have to take the lead. At the moment, however, it is steering straight toward a single $1.1 million Haines Park field — another tiny step without a long-term vision.

Scott Pickering is a Barrington resident and general manager of the East Bay Media Group.