The proposal to put lights on both playing fields at Filippello Park will be presented to the Town Council on Tuesday night.
The presentation will be made at the Council meeting, which begins at 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10. The vote on approving the funding for the project will be made at a future meeting, said Town Council President Mark Sideris.
The proposal calls for replacing the existing lights on the Grove Street Field with LED lights on seven poles, and installing LED lights on four poles on the Arlington Street Field. Other features include a new scoreboard for the Grove Street Field, and a new backstop and chainlink fences in front of the player benches.
The original budget for the project, which also includes a scoreboard, was $900,000, but the latest estimate from designers, CDM Smith, is $1.3 million.
The Recreation Department has held three meetings to discuss the project, the latest in July 2019. At the meetings, residents living near the park complained about the impact of users of the park, especially in the late hours.
Other concerns included the level of the lights in the surrounding neighborhoods due to the new lights. Town officials said the impact will not be great. In February, the Town received an award from the International Dark Skies Award for meeting the group’s standards for reducing impact of lights for the Filippello Park project.
There would be no upward facing lighting on the Arlington Street field, which is used mostly for soccer, but uplighting is proposed for the Grove Street field for so softball players can see balls hit in the air.
See the documents from the presentation to be made to the Town Council below:
Filippello Park Field Lights and Scorebaord Project Presentation – March 10 2020 by Charlie Breitrose on Scribd
Speaking of Filippello Park, is the deal with BB&N going through or did Mt. Auburn cemetery award the bid to someone else?
I thought they were supposed to decided on the winning bid back in January?
The Cemetery has not decided about which bid to go with for the property next to Filippello (which BB&N proposed to turn into athletic fields). You are right, the original deadline had passed.