Proponents of building an athletic turf field at Middlebrook School have said they plan to refile a proposed text amendment to an athletic lighting ordinance with Wilton’s Planning & Zoning Commission today, according to the lawyer representing the applicants. That’s after hitting some controversy and complications following last week’s P&Z town hearing over the subject.

Originally, Gregory & Adams, the law firm representing Wilton Youth Football, Wilton Youth Lacrosse and Wilton Youth Field Hockey filed a petition with the town’s P&Z to amend the town zoning ordinances (Regulation Change #13341). As written, the proposed change would allow 80 foot lights to illuminate athletic facilities on public property, or private property used institutionally, in any residential zone.

Because zoning changes can’t be created for site-specific cases, the petitioners couldn’t specifically ask for zoning changes just for Middlebrook field, so their proposed text broadly applied to “any residential zone.” Opponents to the lighting plan seized on the general nature of the proposed ordinance change. The Committee to Preserve Wilton’s Character, an ad-hoc collection of residents led by forty-year Wilton resident Anthony LoFrisco, banded together to stop the development of the field and its lighting. They created a website and Facebook page, and several residents who attended last week’s P&Z public hearing spoke out against having more lights mar the Wilton landscape, warning against the likely spread of lights to other neighborhoods should P&Z let this pass.

During his comment in front of P&Z at the meeting last Monday, Sept. 24, LoFrisco asserted that Gregory & Adams shouldn’t be allowed to submit the zoning change as the applicant because the firm was not a property owner in the town. He said that as a former member of the P&Z commission, he was familiar with the regulations requiring such a condition. It was a moment of drama that almost halted the proceedings, and Healy told the commission he would look into it and refile if necessary.

Two days ago, Healy sent a letter to P&Z on behalf of Wilton Youth Football to withdraw the ordinance amendment application.

He said the intention was to refile the application Friday morning with a different petitioner. According to Healy, the name of the applicant on the petition is Wilton resident Eric Dean, who lives on Coley Rd. and is also the president of Wilton Youth Football.

“Mr. LoFrisco raised that as a technical issue, whether Gregory and Adams was the proper applicant for the proposed legislation. While I believe that argument is meritless, in order to eliminate a potential issue–particularly one that someone might appeal, which would obviously delay the project–we decided to withdraw and refile.”

But according to Healy, the bigger reason that the petition was withdrawn to be refiled was that the petition itself was changed. That was done to directly address questions raised by members of the P&Z commission.

“Not only will the actual applicants who are filing be different, having listened to the comments and questions of the Planning & Zoning Commission, we’ve made further changes to the proposed regulations.”

Healy outlined the changes.

  • “We defined the term ‘athletic field’ as follows:  A piece of land used for playing field sports, such as football, soccer, field hockey, baseball, softball, lacrosse or similar sports, or for competition such as track-and-field meets. We basically looked at what they used the town-owned, public school properties fields for, and that was the complete list as far as we could tell.”
  • We deleted the term ‘facility’ and substituted the term ‘field.’ So it would be outdoor lighting for athletic fields.”
  • We limited the outdoor lighting of athletic fields to ‘town-owned public school properties, and thereby eliminated privately-owned residential properties used institutionally, such as private schools or churches.
  • We did not limit the height of the lights to 70 feet, for the reason that there are already 80 foot lights at the varsity baseball fields and/or softball fields.

Acknowledging that one of the hypothetical arguments against the original proposed regulations might have allowed an individual resident to create an organization for Bocce Ball in order to erect 80-foot lights on a private home bocce court, Healy said, “That would no longer meet the definition of ‘athletic field’ and if it isn’t on town-owned, public school property, it wouldn’t qualify.”

CORRECTION:  1:30 p.m. the article was updated to reflect that the field hockey group taking part in the “Time to Turf” effort is the Wilton Youth Field Hockey Association, and not the Wilton Field Hockey Association.