The Representative Town Meeting deserves thanks. So do the citizens, volunteers, rink families, coaches, town staff, task force members, Planning and Zoning commissioners, BET members, and elected officials who carried the Dorothy Hamill Rink project across a difficult threshold. In approving the budget with rink funding intact, the RTM did something more consequential than appropriate dollars. It acknowledged reality.
That reality has been visible for years. The existing rink is old, undersized, out of date, and living beyond its useful life. The rink was built in 1971, began as an outdoor facility, and no longer meets current building, energy, life-safety, ADA, ventilation, restroom, or program needs. Delay has not made these deficiencies less expensive; it has made them more urgent.
The town’s own timeline tells the story. After years of committees, evaluations, public meetings, hearings, and revisions, the Board of Selectmen approved Municipal Improvement status 3-0, Planning and Zoning approved it 5-0, and the BET approved $41.2 million in funding 12-0. The RTM has now preserved that funding in the budget. The next step is plain: approve the MI status in June so the work can proceed to final design, site plan review, bidding, and construction.
This is an occasion for gratitude. The RTM heard the arguments, endured the repetition, respected the process, and declined to reduce the project to another study in municipal hesitation. The attempted reduction of construction funding failed, and the project now moves forward with both design and construction funding in place.
The Sentinel has repeatedly warned that prudence is not inertia. In January, we wrote that “ice time in Greenwich remains scarce, fragmented, and constrained by aging facilities,” and that each year of delay narrows options, increases costs, and weakens public confidence.
Earlier rink supporters made the same point: the project is not merely a rink, but a community space serving youth hockey, figure skating, school teams, public skating, families, and Byram itself.
First Selectman Fred Camillo has put the matter bluntly. Greenwich’s rink is, by Fairfield County standards, an embarrassment; the project also provides a showcase baseball field and improvements to Eugene Morlot Memorial Park, including better recognition of the Memorial Grove. He is right that the longer the town waits, the more taxpayers spend merely to keep an aging building functioning. Dorothy Hamill once said of Olympic success, “I worked as hard as I could.” That is not only a skater’s creed; it is a civic one.
Many people have worked hard here: residents who attended meetings, boards that reviewed plans, volunteers who absorbed criticism, and public servants who kept the project alive when delay was the easier politics. Now the RTM should complete what it has honorably begun. Funding without MI approval would be a promise with a locked door. Greenwich should unlock it.
The town has debated. It has vetted. It has revised. It has listened. It has funded.
Now it should finish.
