St. James soccer fields to be replaced under town renovation plan

Smithtown officials plan to renovate parks, resurface soccer fields and study a possible municipal solar array in 2021 under a $6.8 million capital spending plan.

Town board members approved 14 bond issues at a Jan. 21 meeting that will fund most improvements, including typical big-ticket public works purchases such as trucks and heavy equipment, road signals and a replacement barn for road salt in Kings Park. The board approved two bond issues for roadway drainage work at an earlier meeting.

Perhaps the most publicly visible project is replacement of two large, aging artificial turf fields at Moriches Park Soccer Complex in St. James, a $821,433 cost the town will fund out of its operating budget.

A $1.6 million bond will pay for other parks projects: new playgrounds for East Hill Park in St. James, playground renovations for Laurel Drive Park in Smithtown and improvements for Flynn Memorial Park in Commack. Flynn's playground was moved during a rebuild of the softball complex last year; the playground will reopen near the fields and the parking lot will be repaved. Smaller bonds will finance building and equipment purchases for bay constables and purchase of awnings to shade the Smithtown Landing Country Club pools.

Parks are "important for quality of life and they bring home values up," town Supervisor Edward Wehrheim said in an interview. Wehrheim was director of Smithtown’s Department of Parks, Buildings and Grounds from 1983 to 2003.

He estimated it will cost $10 million to $12 million to bring town facilities "up to the standards we need today" and said that this year’s planned work would bring that effort to 60% completion.

The Smithtown Kickers Soccer Club, whose roughly 2,000 youth members practice and compete at the soccer complex, said field replacement was welcome, especially since access to school fields elsewhere has been curtailed because of COVID-19.

"On a weekend, we might have games from 9 a.m. all the way to dark," said Paul Friedrichs, club travel director. And "what people don’t realize is everybody has to train during the week, so you’ve got as many as six teams on a given field. You use it enough, it gets worn out."

The fields have lasted several years past the typical lifespan for artificial turf — which is a little more than a decade — and are starting to lose their cushion, Smithtown park maintenance director Joe Arico said.

Also included in the bond issues: $55,825 to study a possible solar array at the 70-acre municipal services facility in Kings Park. Much of that area is landfill that could be topped by a revenue-generating solar array, though landfill settling and anchoring of solar panels could make for engineering challenges, environment and waterways director David Barnes said. The size of an array and a revenue model have yet to be determined. The town could operate the array itself or lease the site to a company, he said. The town will put out a request for proposals in the spring.