Lebanon
With only a small increase in cars and mitigation to the noisiest mechanical systems an upgraded, two-rink building would be a partial improvement, they argued last Monday.
Working alongside the town of Hanover and nonprofit Hanover Improvement Society, the Campion Sports and Recreation Project has been seeking approval to upgrade and add an additional ice rink to the complex on Route 10. Garnering Zoning Board approval is just the first step in the project which includes a Hanover Town Meeting vote, Planning Board approval and fundraising.
Erica Wygonik, an engineer with the White River Junction-based Resource Systems Group, told the board last Monday that an expanded rink would only increase peak, weeknight traffic by about 45 cars. She said high school hockey games seem to cause the most traffic, but organizers have promised they won’t increase the number of high school games.
“We looked at this so many different ways, but at the end of the day, what matters is that there’s no increase in games,” Wygonik said, according to an audio recording of the meeting. “Any additional increase reflects just additional practices” and activities.
She said currently there are “minimal delays” with traffic on Route 10, and her study — funded by the Campion Sports and Recreation Project — determined that a rink expansion wouldn’t change that. She said driveway conditions aren’t ideal, but sight distances in the area are good.
Those driveway conditions are expected to continue until 2027, when a hypothetical model predicts things will get worse. That model accounts for significant proposed development in Lebanon, Wygonik said, but those models are normally overly optimistic about future development.
Board member Alan Patterson said the study was too vague and didn’t answer questions about what would happen to traffic in the greater Route 10 area. As a retired Hanover police officer, he said, on-the-ground driving conditions could be a lot worse than the engineering survey predicts.
“There is very heavy traffic at certain times where this would absolutely be a hazard,” he said of the expansion.
People often speed on the road, Patterson said, and the study didn’t make mention of the rush-hour congestion.
“Although this is an interesting survey, it didn’t really answer some of my questions,” he said in the audio recording.
Wygonik said the study was done according to standard engineering practice. When it comes to determining safety, she said, a crash history provides the most accurate picture of the road.
“That’s my biggest concern,” she said. “If there’s a ton of crashes in a location, that’s something that would really flag to me that there is a problem in this area.”
She was only able to find three crashes between 2004 and 2014, though, and most were before the city made improvements to the Route 10 and Gould Road intersection.
Patterson disagreed and said more traffic from events and practices could lead to more crashes.
“On paper it looks good sometimes, but sometimes the reality is that’s not what really happens,” he said.
Although Patterson has expressed concern in past meetings that the rink expansion could lead to more calls to first responders, Lebanon Police Capt. Tim Cohen doesn’t think that will be a problem.
In an April 7 email to planning officials, Cohen said, officers responded to the rink 152 times between Jan. 1, 2015, and early this month. Of those, 52 were contracted police details, another 60 were routine business checks and 20 were for “street time checks,” where an officer attends community events to increase the department’s presence and reputation.
“As you can see, most of the calls to Campion were either officer initiated, were compensated or had no direct relation to the operation of the rink,” Cohen wrote. “Combined with my knowledge of history at Campion and the lack of emergency calls as vetted by the numbers I ran, I maintain my confidence that the impact of the Campion expansion would be minimal on police services.”
Resource Systems Group also performed a noise study of the site, placing monitors about 100 feet south of the rink’s cooling tower and near Route 10.
Eddie Duncan, a noise engineer for RSG, said the main source of background noise came from Route 10 traffic, but the monitors picked up noise as high as 65 decibels from the cooling tower. A normal conversation with a person three feet away usually registers between 50 and 60 decibels, Duncan said.
He said the increased traffic at the rink isn’t enough to increase noise, while installing a new cooling tower and utilizing noise mitigation devices could save nearby neighbors a few decibels.
Sheila and John Larsson, whose house sits directly south of the rink, attested that the tower makes a “terrible racket.”
“When that cooling tower does kick on, it’s very loud. It’s much louder than when its running,” John Larsson said.
When he purchased his property 20 years ago, he knew that the rink was there and values it as an asset to the community.
“We will put up with the irritation and so far, that’s all it’s been,” he said in the audio recording. “But when that addition comes almost into our backyard, that makes it much more of an imposition.”
Officials with the Campion project have been to see the Larssons and are working to agree on a list of improvements that mitigate the project. So far, John Larsson said, he’s satisfied with their promises.
Pam Jenkins, who lives on Gould Road, also had a Campion official reach out, but she still worried that the engineering reports didn’t take into account teenage drivers or peak season noise. The noise study was performed in April, when rink operations begin to slow down.
“I think there are still concerns,” she said. “We just want to make sure things are done right.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.