Natural Heritage regulators have signed off on lighting plans for Groton's long-delayed Cow Pond Brook Road athletic fields, clearing a key hurdle for the town's cost-cut redesign of the youth sports complex.

GROTON --

TOWN: The value-engineered redesign of the Cow Pond Brook Road playing fields moved through two public meetings this week after the original project failed at town meeting. Engineer Meg Bezinski of Activitas presented a revised plan to the Conservation Commission on August 11 and the Planning Board on August 13, outlining eight cost-saving changes: leaving the southern parking lot as gravel instead of paving it, using Cape Cod berm asphalt curbing instead of granite, switching sidewalks from concrete to asphalt, replacing porous asphalt walkways with stone dust, moving from subsurface stormwater basins to at-grade infiltration basins with sediment forebays, seeding rather than sodding most areas, reducing some site equipment such as ball netting and playground features, and scaling back a planned turtle nesting habitat area while still deeding the southern parcel to conservation.

Bezinski told the Conservation Commission that Natural Heritage's preliminary review "made no comment about lighting" at baseball field two, resolving a question the commission had held open since a July 28 hearing before it would consider closing its review. Commission members also discussed maintaining natural buffer areas along new pathways and mowing schedules for meadow seed mix on slopes near the parking areas.

The Planning Board continued its related site plan review hearing for the project, PB 2026-04, to August 27, while the Conservation Commission's public hearing on the notice of intent for the fields also remains open. Both boards are expected to take up the plan again before it can be readied for a fall town meeting vote.

Compiled from team and league reports, reader submissions, and local coverage.