BUCKLAND — Whether you call it Cricket Field, Vets Field or the Chadwick Memorial Field, the baseball field off Conway Street has seen many youth baseball games over the last 50 years — if not longer.
And now, with a $50,000 check from TransCanada, the town is hoping the baseball field will always be a ball field for local youth.
On Tuesday night, TransCanada land agent Brandon Kibbe gave selectmen $50,000 as a matching grant for half the purchase price of the ballpark. With a giant check in hand, Kibbe said most TransCanada grants given to communities fall within the $1,000 to $5,000 range. “But this goes above and beyond,” he told selectmen. “This took a little ‘Please?’ all the way up to Calgary. But they saw the wisdom in this.”
The town is applying for a state PARC (Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities) grant for the rest of the $100,000 needed to buy the land from the V.F.W. Post 8503. The V.F.W. has maintained the land as a community recreational resource ever since it bought the land from Lamson & Goodnow in 1970.
This year, the land has since been appraised as worth $115,000. The parcel and buildings consists of about 3¼ acres, and it has lighting for night games.
“As a neighbor to Cricket Field, we understand its significance to the community of Buckland and the village of Shelburne Falls,” said Kibbe, who read a letter of support for the ballpark purchase. “The field has provided an important recreational resource to generations both for its built facilities and for the access it provides to adjoining trail systems on the Gardner Falls properties along the Deerfield River. And our employees, who are lifelong residents … have supported the use and stewardship of Cricket Field over the years. We are happy to be able to ensure that tradition can continue for generations to come.”
The letter goes on to say that TransCanada officials also “appreciate how the public safety and security changes that TransCanada is making to our power generation infrastructure next door has unavoidably impacted local recreation. The potential for simultaneously losing Cricket Field to residential development would be a significant blow to the quality of life in Shelburne Falls, which is why we were so quick to offer our assistance to the town …”
The Shelburne Falls Kiwanis Club also sent a letter of support for the purchase of the ball field, saying that the Kiwanis Club has used the pavilion for several years as its summer meeting place “and would love to continue to be able to do so.” Also, the club members plan to do some maintenance and repairs to the pavilion, to update it for use in future years.
According to the History of Buckland, volume 2, Cricket Field was named by the Englishmen who came across the Atlantic to work for Lamson & Goodnow cutlery, and played cricket for recreation in the lot near the factory.
In the 1950s, the field was used by the Little League for practice, until a ballpark was created at the Buckland Recreation Area on Route 112. Later on, the town wanted to build a road through that field, to straighten out the sharp curves of the existing roadway, but the Mohawk Men’s Softball League instead encouraged the VFW to buy the property, to keep it for recreational purposes, the history book says.
According to Town Administrator Andrea Llamas, the VFW bought the land for $3,000 — with a contingency written in the deed that it be maintained as recreation land.
“That contingency was good for 50 years,” Llamas explained. She said the VFW was looking to sell the property sooner than 2020, when it could be sold at market value. She said selectmen didn’t want to see the parcel sold off as individual house lots in another four years, so they reached a purchase/sales agreement with the VFW Post. “This is a big, recreational part of the town,” she said, adding that the town wants it to be a permanent recreation area.
Besides the TransCanada money match to help the town secure the PARC grant, voters at the May annual town meeting supported the plan.