Southeast Officials Prefer Baseball Facility Off Route 312

SOUTHEAST, NY — Southeast town officials want to give town-owned land on Pugsley Road, which intersects Route 312 just west of the I-84 interchange, to a sports training company — and get its land on Starr Ridge Road in return.

The Starr Ridge Road property is owned by ProSwing, a South Salem-based company with a large youth baseball coaching facility in Mount Kisco. ProSwing said it wanted to put a a baseball recreational and training operation there but has not brought any plans to the town.

The neighborhood of high-priced estates is zoned residential.

Now town officials are OKing a "swap" in which ProSwing will give the town its land on Starr Ridge Road in return for town land on Pugsley Road that is zoned 'rural commercial.'

Town officials did not say if they would be using the property on Starr Ridge Road for recreation. It has no public access now.

The swap idea was discussed between town staff and ProSwing, then brought to the town board, according to The Examiner.

Other developers are trying to build a large warehouse distribution facility on Pugsley Road. That plan has met with opposition from New York state and New York City environmental officials as the area has long been listed as feeder wetlands for the Middle Branch Reservoir.

The land the town wants to give to ProSwing is designated open space, so changing it to commercial use would require OK's from the state legislature and the governor.

Though resident Ann Fanizzi asked town officials to hold more than one public meeting about the plan, the decision was to vote Feb. 20 on whether to ask the state for approval.

"From the first moment that I saw the Feb. 3rd Public Hearing notice in the local Putnam press, obtained not three days before the workshop meeting of Feb. 6th, information has been sparse and coming sporadically," Fanizzi told Southeast-Brewster Patch. "The notice itself gave no hint of the bait and switch swap negotiations that must have occurred perhaps in the latter part of 2019 when the land was purchased."

A recreational sports facility would add car traffic to the heavy truck traffic expected with the massive distribution facility proposed and opposed by neighbors worried about traffic on already congested Fair Street. Patterson's town supervisor joined New York watershed officials in August in sending warning letters to Southeast town officials about Pugsley Road and the project, Commercial Campus at Fields Corner, once known as Northeast Interstate Logistics.