For a dozen years our Village Board has been struggling mightily to figure out what exactly to do with Gouveia Park, the acceptance of which, many with long tenure in our village feel was a colossal mistake. You may recall that the original proposal for the property would have permitted Mrs. Gouveia to live TAX-FREE in her home for the remainder of her life. She was only about 70 at the time, and it was her tragic death led to our current dilemma.
The Board’s latest grandiose scheme for the property was presented at a recent meeting chaired by Village Manager, Bryan Healy, and involves the transfer of the Recreation Department to the site (a really bad idea) and the conversion of the existing house to a community center which would host performances, concerts, art shows and other cultural events. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Putting aside the fact that Gouveia is miles from the center of the village, creating great inconvenience for anything done there, the proposal raises two other major questions:
First, is such a facility really necessary or only a golden dream floating in the minds of the current Board and some others around the community?
Second, how much will the facility construction cost, where will that money come from, and what will be the annual operating costs of the center?
In the initial instance, Croton already has a multiplicity of cultural events each year hosted by a wide variety of venues throughout our village. I have personally attended performances, concerts, art shows, lectures, meetings, etc., etc. at the Community Room of the Municipal Building, Croton-Harmon High School auditorium, the Croton Free Library, Senesqua Park, Holy Name of Mary, Asbury Methodist Church, St. Augustine’s Church, Temple Israel, The Unitarian-Universalist Church, Croton River Artisans Gallery, Croton Academy of Arts, the Black Cow, the Croton Yacht Club, the Green Growler, and numerous other facilities around the village, including our most recent venue, The Grand, very conveniently located right in the heart of our business district.
Is this not enough for Croton? Are all of these programs now to be wrenched away from their current homes and dragged several miles up the road to Gouveia? Mr. Healy says no, that the new center would supplement, not replace, all of these other facilities. In fact, the Board has not yet contacted any of them to determine whether the opening of the center would negatively impact any of their current programs.
The Board has adopted a top-down, “If we build it, they will come” philosophy. Let’s spend millions of dollars constructing the facility and, once it’s finished, then we’ll figure out what to do with it. Perhaps it’s my engineering background, but I would propose a more logical approach.
We’ll start with a blank calendar for a typical year. Then, we’ll inscribe on that calendar each of the events that already take place in our village and their schedule. This will necessarily involve discussions with the owners of our current cultural venues, as well as obtaining their input as to the necessity and desirability of the new center. Of course, the Board may not want to go there, as they have traditionally been adverse to hearing anything that doesn’t totally agree with their own vision.
Next, we’ll go week-by-week and add the additional events to be held at the new center and decide which existing events will be relocated there. This will, of course, involve some speculation, but we were assured that there is a great demand for such additional events. Once complete, we will have a full picture of the cultural life of our village and we will be able to determine how much demand there is for the new facility and how much of its space will be utilized for how much of the time.
If we find that the new facility will be, e.g., used 75% of the time and more than half the space will be occupied during that period, maybe that’s enough to proceed. If utilization turns out to be low, maybe we should pause the program. But, either way, we will develop the appropriate criteria for utilization in order to determine if the new facility is something that is needed and will truly benefit our village. This will also provide input to the architects that we need a venue that will host specific events at specific times, and they can provide a facility that meets our criteria.
Once we determine if we wish to proceed with the facility, we must face the costs. The short answer is that, at the present time, we have no idea what the redevelopment of Gouveia Park will cost us. At the meeting, the architects stated that, a rough estimate made a year or so ago placed the cost at about $2.5 million. Construction costs have increased markedly over the past couple of years, so it will undoubtedly be significantly more than that. We will not know the total figure until a detailed design is completed, including whatever landscaping, road improvements, parking expansion, etc. will be necessary.
The present concept is to obtain whatever funds are necessary through the award of grants from public and private sources, none of which have been obtained to date. A Herculean task at best. On the positive side, we were assured that construction would not begin until adequate funding for the entire project had been assured. Certainly a beneficial step, if the Board actually follows through with it. Alternatively, we taxpayers will be left with the bill for anything not covered by the grants.
Nonetheless, the Board has allocated $500,000 to be spent on Gouveia this fiscal year, about $400,000 of it allocated for this summer for improvements that are not well defined. One of the items to be accomplished is “update and replace driveway to the house.” You may recall that some years ago, the entry was upgraded and a parking lot installed. The costs estimated in the economic analysis promulgated by the then-Board to justify acceptance of the property was $14,000. The final cost when the job was actually done, exceeded $225,000. An amount that it appears we will simply throw away when the new road and parking system is designed. So be very wary of accepting any estimates provided to you by the proponents of this project.
And in addition to the capital costs, we need an estimate of the annual operating costs of the facility. Certainly, the area housing the Recreation Department will have to be heated, cooled, cleaned, etc. twelve months a year and similarly for the cultural spaces, which will have to be occupied much of the time if we are to justify the entire project. Water and sewerage services must be provided. And the current Recreation Department spaces in the Municipal Building will continue to be heated, cooled, etc. even after the personnel are transferred. Whether these operating costs will come from additional grants or out of the regular taxpayer-funded village budget must be determined so we will know exactly how much this facility will cost us.
It is also worth stating that, in that original economic analysis, beginning in Year 4, Gouveia Park was supposed to be generating a net profit of $85,000 per year. We are now in Year 12 or 13 and we have not seen a nickel of those promised profits and a great deal of money, much of it not defined, has been poured into the property. And, oh yes, before the village accepted ownership, the property was paying over $40,000 in total taxes each year. These would be a lot higher today, but the actual tax contribution of the property is zero.
So before we get ourselves too excited about the new cultural center, let us determine exactly what we expect to be done there and how much it will be utilized. And before we spend any significant funds on it, let us get a detailed and accurate estimate of all of the costs. And let us make sure that full funding of the project has been secured before we turn the first spade of earth. Because, once we begin, if the grants do not cover all of the costs, the money will come out of the taxpayers pockets. Something that many in our village simply cannot afford.
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