The Raymond Board of Selectmen will examine a proposal to build a recreational complex on 20 acres of town-owned land at 77 Patricia Ave. in downtown Raymond.
The complex, which would cost the town about $2 million, would feature a volleyball court, tennis courts, basketball courts, a playground area, two multi-purpose fields, a 125-space parking lot, a Little League baseball field, a high school baseball field, and a concession stand. It would also involve the construction of an access road connecting the site with Route 85 to the north.
Town officials have already applied for construction assistance from the military through the Pentagon’s Innovative Readiness Training program, and will learn if the application is successful this summer. They have also initiated negotiations with two property owners to the north of the site, in order to secure land for the proposed access road.
The board will formally discuss the proposal at a budget workshop on March 2. On March 24, the board will decide whether to keep the proposal in the budget. If the board and the budget finance committee decide the project is worth doing, they will send it to voters as a bond issue this summer.
The project would be the town’s first comprehensive municipal recreation complex. There are baseball fields at Raymond Elementary School, Jordan-Small Middle School and the Sheri Gagnon Park on Mill Street. But the school fields do not have concession stands or dugouts, and the Mill Street field suffers from drainage problems.
Last spring, the Raymond Board of Selectmen scrapped an $817,000 bond issue for a proposed 19-acre recreation complex off Egypt Road that would have been built by the military, after town officials discovered the site would not comply with state and federal environmental regulations.
The proposed Farwell Drive Recreational Complex, which would have been built on town land abutting Egypt Road, was slated to contain six to seven athletic fields, tennis courts, a basketball court, a dog park and nature trails.
Town officials had hoped to clear about 20 acres of forest in order to make room for the complex, and had applied for assistance through the Innovative Readiness Training program. Once they found an abundance of wetlands, vernal pools, frog eggs, salamanders, tadpoles and beaver dams located in the proposed development area, the selectmen scrapped the bond issue.
According to Selectman Michael Reynolds, town officials had originally considered siting the recreational complex on the town’s 140-acre property on Patricia Avenue. They decided against it due to concerns about routing traffic from Route 302 through the residential neighborhood to the west.
“I didn’t like that idea,” Reynolds said. “I thought that was a non-starter when we thought about this site two years ago, which is why we went with the Egypt Road site because we thought we had better site lines and better access.”
The proposed access road could allay those concerns. Reynolds and Town Manager Don Willard have secured informal agreements with the McGoldrick and Burnham families to run the road through their properties in exchange for a purchase of the right of way and the construction of a water line.
“We have had what I would consider successful negotiations with the two landowners so that we can build an access road,” Reynolds said. “The pieces are all in place to make it a vote for town meeting.”
But the proposed access road will more than double the costs of the project, according to the code enforcement administrative assistant, Danielle Loring.
“Because of the road materials and acquiring land, it’s going to make it a little bit more expensive,” Loring said.
According to Reynolds, the town will only move forward with the project if the Pentagon approves the assistance application. If the application is approved, the military would provide roughly $2 million in labor, equipment and fuel, Loring said. The town, meanwhile, would provide $136,000 this fiscal year, and $1.93 million next fiscal year. If the project is approved, construction would begin in 2017, Loring said.
In May, the town will collaborate with the military on three other public works projects approved in last year’s budget. The military will dredge fire ponds near Oakledge Hills Road, selectively clear vegetation near the intersection of Main Street and Route 302, and erect a 100-foot, self-supporting communications tower on Valley Road for the public safety and public works departments.
The Patricia Avenue site used to host the town’s landfill, Loring said. After the landfill closed in the 1980s, part of the property was used as a sludge site for sewage. A cell tower owned by Crown Castle is now located on the site.
According to Owens McCullough, the Sebago Technics’ vice president of engineering and business development who recommended that the town scrap the Farwell recreational complex proposal last year, the Patricia Avenue project proposal will not be sunk by environmental concerns.
“When we walked the site, it was unique in that I don’t believe we found any wetlands,” McCullough said. “We were just at the end of vernal pool season and we didn’t find anything that would lead us to believe that there were vernal pools or wetlands.”
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