Neighbors look for answers on Rockville Centre field upgrades

A town hall meeting on May 23, focusing on proposed upgrades to the village’s athletic fields and hosted by Rockville Centre Mayor Francis Murray, drew a standing-room-only crowd of residents of the village as well as Lynbrook and East Rockaway, who peppered officials with questions and voiced their concerns about traffic, parking, light pollution, water runoff and the potential impact of the project on the environment and wildlife.

Announced in late January, the plan, part of a proposed agreement between Molloy College and the village, calls for Molloy to foot the $6 million bill to upgrade three of the fields on the village’s south side — Lister, Barasch and Bligh in Centennial Park. Lister would become a multi-purpose, synthetic turf field that can be used for NCAA field hockey, tee ball, Little League and softball. Barasch would become a synthetic turf NCAA men’s baseball field. Bligh would become a multi-league baseball field with a synthetic turf infield and a natural-turf outfield. The village storage yard would become a new, natural-turf, multi-purpose practice field.

Murray said that while he was campaigning, he heard many complaints about the condition of the village’s fields. Molloy’s most recent plan to create home fields for its sports teams by partnering with Bay Park in East Rockaway had been turned down by the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, so Murray called Drew Bogner, Molloy’s president, and they met to discuss their mutual “wants and needs,” Murray said.

Under a public-private partnership, he explained, the fields would go from “worst to first.” The village board approved an agreement for Cameron Engineering to develop the plans, which Molloy will pay for.