Town Says Goodbye To The Eastern Greenwich Civic Center

GREENWICH, CT — Greenwich officials gathered outside of the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center on Friday afternoon to say goodbye to the old building and look forward to the new one.

Interior abatement of the vacant building is still ongoing but should be complete in the next couple of weeks, according to interim Greenwich Superintendent of Building Construction and Maintenance Luigi Romano. Demolition can begin perhaps as early as the end of August, and the hope is to break ground on the new civic center in the fall, Romano said.

The new facility will be named the Cohen Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, after Steve and Alexandra Cohen, who donated $5 million last year as part of a naming rights deal for the project.

Steve Cohen is a Greenwich resident and owner of the New York Mets. He's also the founder of Point72 asset management, a hedge fund company headquartered in Stamford.

First Selectman Fred Camillo, state Rep. Steve Meskers (D-150), Parks and Recreation Director Joe Siciliano, Parks and Rec. Board member Scott Johnson, and Susie Baker of the Greenwich Point Conservancy all stood at the entrance of the boarded up building and reminisced about old times at the civic center. They even took turns wielding a sledgehammer against the brick exterior.

"There are lots of good memories for people here, but as you see the building got old fairly quickly," said Camillo, who used to compete in a basketball league at the civic center when he was younger. "There were lots of leaks here and lots of problems. While you have lots of memories and you cherish them, you look at the building and it's time."

Siciliano also said he's looking forward to the new building.

"It gives us a new format to work from and new programs we can put in here," Siciliano said. "We're really excited about doing this and getting the building up and running and providing a new opportunity for the town."

Johnson, who was co-chair of the EGCC Committee, said he was glad the process of trying to get a new civic center was over.

"[A new civic center] has been a point of debate for at least 30 years in town," Camillo added. "The fact we got it over the finish line, we're very proud of that, and we're very proud of our public/private partnership."

The current structure was built in 1950 as an employee recreation center for Electrolux. The town acquired the building and the 13.22-acre site in 1966.

Greenwich began to develop plans for a building rehabilitation in 2000, but in the years that followed, issues with the facility began to crop up which required immediate repairs.

After exploring existing conditions of the concrete structure, other problems were investigated such as space utilization, functionality and accessibility.

The lack of thermal insulation and air conditioning throughout the building, as well as a deteriorating subterranean plumbing system, have been problems for years. The town determined that a complete replacement made more sense.

The new civic center will be built on the same footprint as the current building, and was originally projected to cost around $21.5 million. The Representative Town Meeting then approved an additional $4.04 million for the project in March of this year.

The new building will be one-story and 35,418-square feet, and include a full-size multi-use gymnasium with roll-out spectator seating; 8,100 square feet of multi-use event space; three 1,000-square-foot activity rooms, two of which will share a partition that can be opened to create a larger room; and other amenities.