Divided Over Parking, Sound View Bonds Over Bathrooms

There's nothing like a public bathroom to bring all sorts of people together and if there's one thing everyone could agree on at last night's meeting, it was that Sound View Beach is in desperate need of good bathroom facilities. 

Currently, public bathrooms consist of a collection of Port-o-lets imprisoned behind a wire fence. No one likes to use them and if you're downwind, it's not a great place for a picnic either. Business owners say the lack of appealing public conveniences is a downright inconvenience for them.

"They don't knock on your door to use the bathroom," said one restaurant owner in a comment aimed at local residents. Sound View residents retorted that it's not the business owners' lawns that people are relieving themselves on when they leave the beach and the bars late at night.

On this particular occasion, however, Commission members were able to point to some relief in sight. A proposal to make Sound View Beach a destination location for tourists includes installing permanent bathrooms with showers at the beach.

How to Make Sound View a Tourist Destination

Sound View Commission has discussed a proposal aimed at making the beach a tourist destination at numerous meetings for more than a year now and the Old Lyme Board of Selectman has applied for a state Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grant to fund 80 percent of the proposed $650,000 project.

All this came as news to many of the people in attendance last night, however, so in case you missed it too, here are the details. The proposal calls for:

• New bathrooms with flush toilets and shower facilities. The bathrooms would be constructed on a raised concrete platform because Swan Pond's high water table makes the area prone to flooding. The prefabricated bathrooms would operate on a composting system because septic systems are not allowed for environmental reasons. This would cost about $250,000, which amounts to more than a third of the total price tag for the proposal.
• Plans to create a park and picnic area, which would be used as a space for events. The commission has kicked around a number of ideas for events designed to attract tourists and extend the season, including art shows, a clam chowder festival, and a jazz festival. 
• Pedestrian walkways and a new bike path would be constructed to connect to existing bike paths and to nine town transit bus lines (all of which are equipped with bike racks) to help drive traffic to the area in a more environmentally-friendly way. 
• Parking kiosks for both the town parking lot and the street. These computerized pay systems would accept both cash and credit cards and prices could be adjusted as needed. At $12,000 per kiosk, this would amount to a total of about $36,000. 

An Impass Over Parking

. The bathrooms would be constructed on town-owned land and that will require the sacrifice of a number of spaces in the town parking lot to make room for toilets and to create a park.

For people who operate private parking lots, that's not such a bad thing. Many private lot operators at last night's meeting accused the town of trying to drive them out of business because —which the town did to try to meet the demands of local bar and restaurant owners—had undercut their parking prices. 

The bars and other business owners on Hartford Avenue, meanwhile, said that fewer parking spots would only exasterbate the existing parking problem. They blame the newly-imposed street parking fees for the drop in business they experienced this season.

It's impossible to please all the people all the time and when it comes to parking, it seems no one is happy with any of the recommendations that have been made by the Sound View Commission and acted on by the Old Lyme Board of Selectmen this summer.

Sound View residents, however, were eager to express their appreciation for a season they praised as one of the most peaceful and trouble-free they'd seen in years, thanks in large part to the town's new policies and stepped up enforcement by police and park rangers of existing rules regarding beach behavior.

From Sound View Commission's perspective, that's a sign of progress. 

The Commission's Goal

Although most of the Sound View Commission members are business owners, including Pavilion owner Frank Marotta who is an alternate member and the one person who owns a business by the beach, the commission was not created to boost business. 

The Commission was formed in 2010 with three primary directives, Commission Chairman Frank Pappalardo said: to ensure public safety; improve the quality of life in Sound View; and to make the public beach an asset to the town of Old Lyme.

The proposal to revamp the beach area is intended to accomplish the latter but the decision to move forward doesn't just rest in the hands of Sound View residents and business owners. The town of Old Lyme will have to vote to approve spending more than $100,000, which wouldn't be covered by the grant, to make this happen. 

As money collected by the town for parking fees at Sound View Beach goes directly into the Town of Old Lyme's General Fund to be used as the Board of Selectmen and voters see fit, there's a case to be made for spending the money on Sound View development.

So far, Pappalardo said, there seems to be support for the proposal. Old Lyme's Federation of Beaches has sent letters of support and the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance are in favor of the project.

"We are part of the Old Lyme community, and people in the rest of Old Lyme know this," Pappalardo said.

Every Vote Counts

If the state grant comes through, property owners in Old Lyme will be asked, after a series of public hearings on the proposal to be held in September and October, to vote to appropriate money at a Special Town Meeting. 

A number of Sound View residents expressed doubts that people in the rest of Old Lyme, some of whom have never ventured to the town's public beach, would go for it but Commission member Michaelle Pearson takes a more optimistic view.

"Now is the time to start talking this up," she said. "This is a small town and your voice can be heard."