As the World Cup approaches on June 11, The Shoestring’s Dusty Christensen is looking for your soccer-related stories from western Massachusetts. Got a tip? Email Dusty at dchristensen@theshoestring.org.
In 2005, when a real-estate developer was in the final stages of building a luxury retirement community on Bridge Road in Northampton, one key step remained: identifying how to make part of the property into publicly owned “open space.”
It was part of the city’s “open space/residential cluster” process, in which developers are allowed to build more dense housing than is usually allowed — an attractive option for them to make more money by building more units and lowering their infrastructure costs. In exchange, the developer sets aside valuable land either for conservation or public recreational use. It can be a win for both parties.
For the developer of Bear Hill Estates — John Chakalos of Windsor, Connecticut — the original idea was to make part of the property into community gardens. But after officials raised concerns about parking at neighboring JFK Middle School, another idea emerged: a soccer field and sledding hill.
“I suggested that the idea of a playing field seems much better,” Joseph Misterka, then the associate superintendent of schools, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette in 2005. He was “pleasantly surprised” that the developers liked the idea of a smaller-sized soccer field, which he said would allow the city to rotate the spaces it uses for junior leagues, putting less strain on the grass.
So the developer built the field. However, two decades later, the city doesn’t maintain it as an active sports facility as originally planned. Few know that it exists.
The agreement called for the developer to install “permanent signs for the soccer field” and the adjacent sledding hill. But besides small wooden posts with notes that say “conservation restriction,” nothing alerts the public to the field, which could be easily mistaken for private land. (Bear Hill’s brochure tells would-be residents that “when grandchildren are visiting, they’ll enjoy the site’s youth soccer field and sledding hill.”) The developers also told city officials the soccer field would have “goals provided,” but none exist. The field isn’t even listed on the city’s website.
What gives? After developers gave the city prime real estate for a public soccer field — in exchange for a more profitable outcome for themselves — why did the city never follow through?
In interviews, city officials say that the situation is more complicated than just declaring the space a public field.
Carolyn Misch, the director of the city’s Office of Planning and Sustainability, said that the city wouldn’t designate something as a public recreation field that didn’t have an access point that was compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“Frankly, we just haven’t looked at engineering a potential solution,” Misch said.
All of that would cost money, as would putting up a fence to keep smaller children safe and stop errant balls. Misch said the city has to balance that with other factors: “Where is the demand for recreation in the city, and is that money better spent somewhere else?”
Misch said that it’s ultimately not up to her department to think about what the city’s recreation needs are. Her department’s focus, she said, is look for opportunities for space and then collaborate with the Parks and Recreation Department.
Ann-Marie Moggio, the Parks and Recreation Department’s director, did not return multiple phone messages. In an email, she echoed Misch’s concerns about accessibility and fencing.
“There are many factors that would need to be addressed before the site could be suitable for organized recreational programming or organized soccer use,” she said. “The city would first need to conduct a full assessment of the area, including an evaluation of the field dimensions and the overall condition of the field … Any improvements would require planning, design and funding, as well as a maintenance plan.”
Moggio and Misch both noted that after the city acquired the Bear Hill field, Northampton managed to secure the land on Meadow Street that was eventually developed into Florence Recreation Fields, which opened in 2016 and has five regulation-sized soccer fields.
“Currently, Bear Hill is not available for organized play and is not considered an appropriate athletic facility due to the accessibility, condition and maintenance challenges,” Moggio wrote in her email.
However, athletes in the city do use the field.
For example, Valley Ultimate, a nonprofit, hosts an after-school program there, according to its website. And neighbors say that schoolchildren use the field.
What’s more, some in the youth-athletics community in Northampton say there’s a big need for more playing spaces in the city.
“We definitely need more fields,” said Jeff Mackler, a longtime soccer player, coach, and volunteer in the city who is now one of the co-owners of the indoor sports facility Allsport Arena. “Kids need space to play. It keeps them out of trouble, and in a town like Northampton there is absolutely no reason there shouldn’t be more fields.”
Mackler, who grew up in the city, said there used to be far more fields available for kids and adults looking to play on soccer goals. But now, he said that demand is high enough for the city’s full-sized soccer fields that this spring, for example, his kid’s youth team has hardly had the chance to practice on one — an important element of learning the game’s intricate tactics. They had to practice on smaller fields.
“I’m well aware in many parts of the world we don’t have fields,” he said. “I understand we’re privileged … but it’s pretty frustrating.”
The situation is exacerbated by what Mackler described as the extreme care with which the city treats the grass at Florence Fields. He said many see the mandate to frequently rotate fields, and to cancel games and practice pretty much any time there’s rain, as excessive. He said he feels like the city should do a better job prioritizing children over grass.
“All the other towns sort of laugh about it,” he said. “If there’s a cloud, there’s no games in Northampton.” By contrast, his child recently played a game in the pouring rain in Springfield, he said.
Mackler said that “it’s a tragedy” Northampton isn’t using the Bear Hill field, even if it’s not a full-sized, 11-on-11 field. More fields would allow the city to rotate them more often, he said — something Misterka, the former school official, mentioned in his comments to the Gazette two decades prior.
“I think any field helps,” Mackler said. “If we got a few teams off the smaller fields, we could build one more bigger field at Florence.”
But at a time when many municipalities are facing budget crunches, some say that recreation departments and municipalities have a lot of priorities to balance.
“I wish there was an easy solution,” said Mark Ames, a Northampton native who has played and coached soccer in the city over several decades. “But there’s a lot of issues that go into these decisions that are challenging, and I appreciate that.”
Ames, an elected official who serves as the register of the Hampshire Probate and Family Court, said that he appreciates that it might be tough to make a field like Bear Hill ADA-compliant, especially in tight economic times.
“It’s not like we can wave a magic wand over it and make it happen,” he said.
Ames also said that he understands the city’s reasons for taking such good care of the Florence Fields grass.
“As a coach I was sometimes frustrated with that policy,” he said. But at the same time, having traveled around to other communities to play, he said Florence Fields easily has “the nicest natural turf fields around.”
Ames said that now that his kids are older, he’s not as tapped into the youth-sports world. But he said his impression is that they had enough playing fields, especially after the opening of Florence Fields alleviated pressure on the crowded Oxbow fields.
“If there were playing field issues, that certainly helped,” he said.
Meanwhile, the city continues to use its open space/residential cluster ordinance to protect land from development. Earlier this spring, for example, the Planning Board approved a 39-unit condominium development on Glendale Road that would also preserve 80 acres as city-owned open space.
Misch said that the ordinance has been on the books for more than 30 years.
“We’ve tweaked it here and there, it’s actually due for more of an overhaul,” she said.
Planners frequently identify that kind of strategy as a tool to promote “smart growth,” reducing suburban sprawl and allowing for more dense development while preserving a community’s rural character, the environment, and open space for its residents. A 2011 housing plan in Northampton found, among other recommendations, that the ordinance should be updated to improve challenges it currently creates to building affordable housing as part of those developments.
Crickets were singing in the hot spring sun late last month when a Shoestring reporter visited the Bear Hill field that the ordinance helped create two decades ago. The sounds of kids playing Ultimate and tennis carried across the JFK Middle parking lot from the school’s athletic fields, but nobody was on the Bear Hill grass, which had been mowed recently.
Tim Chilson is the owner of the one house on Bridge Road that abuts the field. He said he sees kids sledding there in the winter. In the warmer months, he said they’re out there, too, both during the school day and after, kicking a ball or throwing around a disc.
“During the summer months, it’s pretty empty,” he said.
Chilson said it doesn’t seem like any organized sports are played there, though. Asked what he thought about the possibility of a soccer field on the property, he said he wouldn’t mind at all.
“This would be a good place for soccer fields for the recreation department,” he said.