It is clear that the amended plans for the controversial Project Homerun, submitted to the state by the Town of Harrison last month, include a baseball field, a multi-purpose field and a gazebo. Less clear is if those items were all intended to be included in the submission.

At a public meeting of the Town Board last month, Mayor Joan Walsh (D) insisted that she had no intentions of including ballfields or a gazebo at the site and said the amended plans reflected that. After the meeting, Walsh reviewed the plans that were submitted to the state, and noticed they were not what she thought they were. “I had a vision in my head, but the vision was not what Bob [Wasp, former acting town engineer] had showed me,” the mayor told us. “The gazebo will be gone; that was a mistake.”

The original Pro­­ject Home­run plan, taken on under the administration of former Town Mayor Steve Malfitano (R), brought fill into the once environmentally-blighted property at the corner of Oakland and Midland avenues in Harrison with the intentions of constructing ballfields there. Residents and City of Rye officials blamed the additional fill for increasing flooding in the region and saw the project temporarily halted before completion. When Mayor Walsh took office in 2007, she was of the stance the project would not be completed as initially planned and would instead be finished with topsoil to promote plant growth, creating a passive recreation area.
A state administrative law judge has been overseeing the application for Homerun, asking the town for more information. But when the amended application went public last month, some felt it did not stray very far from the original concept.

Rye has already responded to Harrison’s latest revision to Project Homerun by providing comments to the Department of Environmental Conservation and the administrative law judge. City Mayor Douglas French (R) told us he was surprised to see the reappearance of proposed ballfields in the plan. “I don’t see tremendous change from the original plan,” French said. “My expectation was there were going to be changes. I heard comments that there weren’t going to be ballfields and there they are.”

Rye’s mayor believes the city has done its part as the waiting begins. In the meantime, French said he would reach out to Mayor Walsh for a discussion; the two have not been in touch since French took office in January. “As our neighbor, I will reach out to Harrison and Mayor Walsh directly to discuss their intentions with the site whether it is with this plan or otherwise,” French stated.

Walsh said some of the designations in the amended plan were not reflective of the town’s ultimate goals. She believes the new plans would significantly increase water retention, a method of alleviating flood levels. “There will be no [organized] sports there,” Walsh said of the baseball field on the plan, adding there would not be any basepaths included at the field. The multi-purpose field, Walsh said, would be grass only. “To call it a multi-purpose field was wrong; that was probably our error,” she said.

The amended plan was filed at the tailend of August. Harrison, combating a difficult budget season, implemented an incentive buyout program for its most senior employees. Former Acting Engineer Wasp was one of the department heads bought out in the cost-saving measure and the amended Homerun was one of his last official duties as a Harrison employee. The mayor stated that the confusion over the new plans was the result of Wasp leaving on Dec. 31. “I think the confusion arose because Bob retired so quickly, it was rushed to get it done on time and I think we just didn’t review it as thoroughly as possible,” Walsh said.

Wasp has since been retained as an outside consultant for Harrison to oversee Homerun and several other Harrison projects. His consultation fee is not to exceed $15,000. The former engineer was to meet with town officials for a Homerun update on Thursday after press time.

Michael LaDore, a Harrison resident who resides in the Beaver Swamp Brook corridor, is one of two petitioners (along with Rye City) looking to the state to reject Homerun’s final permit. LaDore’s home has incurred thousands of dollars in flood damages over the year, thousands he believes might have been spared if fill had never been brought into the site in the first place. LaDore believes the confusion over the plan showed a lack of authority from the Harrison Town Board. “Does this board allow our outside consultants to arbitrarily make modifications on such a large, emotional project without prior approval – especially when Harrison is involved in hearings with the state and there is so much opposition?” LaDore stated. “And finally, who is running our town? Paid consultants or the Town Board?”

LaDore has urged Harrison to withdraw its application and further hopes the town will undertake the task of removing the fill already brought into the site. Though Mayor Walsh said she is adamantly opposed to constructing ballfields at Homerun, she has said in days of little-to-no money to be spent for capital projects, such an undertaking was not something on the town’s radar. She said increased water retention would ease flood concerns and that the lack of major construction would satisfactorily complete Homerun, which is currently in a state of incompletion with a mixture of sand and clay lining the acreage.