After surveys showed strong support around town for a swimming pool — but a public hearing showed adamant opposition from many others to one at Weed Beach — the Parks & Recreation Commission on Wednesday backed away from the proposal, but just for now.
Instead, commission Chairman Mary Flynn announced that she would ask the Board of Selectmen to create an advisory committee to help revise the town’s development plan for parks and recreational services.
As part of that work, the committee would look into where a swimming pool would best be located in town, “which may still be at Weed Beach in the same location,” Flynn said.
At a Parks & Recreation Commission public hearing last month, there were many voices from residents of the neighborhood and elsewhere, strongly opposed to a pool, which they said would be too noisy.
There were plenty of voices in favor of a pool, too, with supporters — including many with young children (a large demographic group in Darien) saying they needed a better place for children to swim than a beach where the tide was out half the time. But those advocates didn’t emphasize that the pool had to be at the beach, and some said they were very open to locating one elsewhere.
Flynn said the ideas of the town constructing a pool and where it should be located were best left to be researched by a committee examining the options in depth. With several other important town projects being proposed, including the $5 million renovation of the town Public Works Garage and expansion projects for more school classroom space, Flynn said she was hesitant to push for a pool immediately.
At Wednesday night’s meeting, several members of the public spoke, most of them asking that the commission reject the pool at Weed Beach.
Kathy Synnot of Cedar Gate Road said she often has to go out of town to find open space, and she thought the open space which had been considered for the pool should be kept as natural as possible.
Gwen Mitrano of Waverly Road said a lot of the parking in the plan that consultants from Weston & Sampson developed for Weed Beach was there to serve the swimming pool, so perhaps the size of the parking lot could be reduced, leaving more room for open space.
John Schrenker said he wondered if the whole plan consultants drew up for Weed Beach might not be reconsidered, since the swimming pool was an important part of it but now might never be built.
Flynn then put each of the major elements of the consultants’ plan for Weed Beach up for individual votes. Commission members unanimously agreed to retain all but one part of the plan — a “splash pad” for small children that would have been located near the swimming pool. That failed in a 4-4 vote.
Among the aspects of the plan that the commission approved: work on a culvert that seemed to be attracting mosquitos, a waterfront center for kayaks, sail boats and paddle boats; a natural walking path, landscaping and restoring the picnic area and replacing shade trees along the beachfront.
Commission member Dennis Conetta said that without the swimming pool at Weed Beach, the splash pad didn’t seem to fit in. If it were located at the park, it might go elsewhere, he said.