As an ongoing effort to educate the greater Worcester community on the factual developments of the Brooks property, President Plough submitted an OpEd piece that ran in the "As I See It" column, August 9, 2002, in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Assumption Growth in the Community

There appears to be some misinformation in the community about Assumption College’s plans for the former Brooks property.

When Assumption College was approached by the Brooks family to purchase almost 8 acres abutting the college campus, the Board of Trustees did so without specific plans, but recognized its value and potential use to the College. Revenues derived from our students’ tuition dollars were used to purchase the property. Since acquiring the property, we’ve elected, for now, not to fence the boundaries, post signs or otherwise discourage its use as an open area. We did, however, commence upon a careful analysis concerning the physical plant needs of the Assumption community and the possibility of utilizing this land to meet those needs.

This past year, the College hired a consultant to create a Master Plan for the campus. As part of that plan, they identified a need for additional athletic practice fields. Those needs result, in part, from our athletic conference (NE-10) requirements and our federal mandate to meet Title IX regulations.
Meeting early with our neighbors has been a consistent, good practice of Assumption College. Such meetings have been the source of positive dialogue with our neighbors during the unprecedented growth upon our campus since 1996. Within weeks of the College receiving and reviewing the consultant’s plans for our use of the former Brooks property, we invited them to a meeting on March 9, 2002 to provide us with their feedback.

At that time, we explained that upon the advice of our Master Plan Consultants we were exploring a three-phased approach to our athletic field needs.

The first phase was to create two practice fields on the new property, maintaining a buffer zone between the fields and our abutters. Access to these fields would only be from our property.

The second phase was to renovate our existing football field, substituting it with a synthetic field that could be used for football, lacrosse and possibly soccer. Lighting and stadium seating were mentioned as a priority for the synthetic field, not for the former Brooks property. Also as part of phase two, we are contemplating realignment of our existing baseball field near the Plourde Recreation Center and the shift of the nearby existing soccer field slightly further north, eliminating the soccer field from the baseball infield.

The proposed third phase was to build a track around the practice fields on the former Brooks property. This plan results from the creation of a one-year pilot program for 2002-03 academic year where track and field will be played as a varsity sport rather than its current club status.
Since that first meeting with the neighbors, Assumption has continued to conduct internal discussions and analysis about concerns voiced that March morning. Specifically, we have followed up with conversations with Councilor Steve Patton as well as a few neighbors about their continued concerns. Mark Bilotta, my Executive Assistant, represented the College at the May 15, 2002 Land Use Committee meeting, continuing our pledge to listen to our neighbors concerns.
Because financing and planning for this project has not been finalized, we are still not prepared to state with certainty the substance of a final plan. What we are prepared to state is that we have heard our neighbors concerns and are exploring the following:

Rather than a track around the proposed practice fields, we’ve asked our consultants to explore designing a track around the proposed synthetic field (the site of our current football field);

We’ve begun a dialogue with representatives of the Worcester Public Schools, Worcester School Committee and with some of the principals involved in the creation of the ‘Field of Dreams’ built behind Nelson Place School to explore a possible joint venture between Nelson Place School and the College.

We believe that inviting our neighbors into the planning process at a very early stage was the right thing to do. While some may prefer our property to remain a modestly wooded old cow pasture, we see our preliminary proposal of creating open, recreational space to be a win-win situation. Once we have established our final plans, we’ll look forward to working with the appropriate City boards and commissions to ensure that all valid neighborhood concerns and environmental requirements are met.

Thomas R. Plough, Ph.D.
President, Assumption College