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Sports dome plan in Dover draws concern

Project could be the first of the sports complex envisioned by Seacoast Maverick's owner

Brian Early
bearly@seacoastonline.com
Brent Edmunds, right, director of baseball operations and pitching coordinator for the USA Training Centers, and Lynette Aucoin, who handles marketing for the firm, stand in a field at 45 Littleworth Road in Dover last summer after the Newington-based USA Training Centers announced the land to be the future of home of firm and Seacoast Mavericks baseball team. A developer is seeking to build a sports dome on part of the land. [Deb Cram/Fosters.com, file]

DOVER — Is an inflatable 72-foot tall sports dome in the Garrison City’s future? Could it be the first part of a sports complex envisioned by the owner of the Seacoast Maverick’s baseball team?

By the looks of plans submitted to the Dover Planning Department, the answer is yes – at least for the sports dome, though the owner of the property has not ruled out additional development, such as an exhibition baseball field.

The city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment was scheduled to hear a request for a variance for the air-supported sports dome project at its meeting this Thursday, which has since been postponed until May. The applicant Queen City Holdings, LLC, and landowner Hot Corner Productions, LLC seek a height variance to allow NH SportsDome to build a 72-foot tall building at 45 Littleworth Road in Dover. NH SportsDome is also proposing to construct a similar dome in Hooksett, according to the application submitted to the Hooksett Community Development Department earlier this year.

The variance in Dover is needed, according to the city’s planning department, as “building heights in excess of 50 feet are permitted in the (industrial-zoned district) only when several conditions are met.” The department believes “the proposal does not meet the condition” for additional building height, and thus needs the ZBA to grant a variance.

The project in Hooksett has already received pushback from abutters who cited concerns about increased traffic and spending, according to a New Hampshire Union Leader report. A recent public hearing about the project stretched for three hours and was scheduled to continue at a meeting Monday, the report said.

The Dover project has had at least one abutter express concern, and more are likely, especially considering the significant opposition to the rezoning of the land from residential to industrial by the City Council in 2017.

Weston Jost, an abutter on Wallace Drive, wrote in an email to the ZBA that upon hearing the proposal does not meet the condition for the additional height is “welcome news to me, AND MY NEIGHBORS, because as you city officials well know (…) we don't want the damn sports facility development in the first place.”

David A. Moore, listed as manager of Queen City Holdings, declined to discuss the project in detail when reached by phone Friday. Moore said the plan had been withdrawn from the Thursday meeting to do additional work on the proposal to ready it for the May ZBA meeting. “We’re going to take our time and do it right,” he said.

According to paperwork submitted with the application, they propose a 350-foot by 230-foot facility that would enclose a 110-yard by 70-yard turf field. “They anticipate having 20 to 50 athletes using the field at any given time. There will be no additional space inside the facility provided for spectators,” wrote TFMoran Senior Project Manager Nicholas Golon, who has also filed paperwork for the Hooksett project. The dome would mostly be three-season – fall, winter and spring – with expected limited use in the summer. There would be 100 parking spaces for the athletes, Golon wrote.

The dome would be on one part of the land now owned by Drew Weber through his entity Hot Corner Productions, LLC. He bought the property from Richard and Ann Kay for $2.4 million in July, according to city records. Weber has a purchase and sales agreement with Queen City Holdings to sell just the portion of the land where the dome and parking lot would be constructed, according to paperwork filed with the ZBA.

Weber, who now lives in Arizona, owned the Boston Red Sox affiliate Lowell Spinners from 1997 to 2016, which had an 11-season streak of selling out home games during that time. He also owned the Connecticut-based New Haven Ravens that he moved to Manchester in 2004 and renamed it the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. He has been fully divested from the team since 2008.

Weber is also co-founder of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League that included the Seacoast Mavericks as a founding team. Weber also owned the FCBL Nashua Silver Knights until he sold it earlier this year, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

Weber said there has not been any other decisions on developing the land other than the sports dome, but said he is not involved in the day-to-day decisions of the development project. Weber said Dave Hoyt, owner of the USA Training Centers in Newington and the Seacoast Mavericks, continues to be involved with the development of the dome. Hoyt did not return a call seeking information about development plans Friday.

According to discussions with Zoning Administrator Elena Piekut and Dover Fire Chief Eric Hagman, another potential roadblock for the sports dome is whether a fire sprinkler system would be required. Whether one is needed is dependent on how many people the dome is designed to hold. Hagman said if the building were designed to hold 100 people or more, it would be required by city codes to have a sprinkler system. The developer could not receive a variance to forgo the sprinkler system if the building exceeded the 99-person threshold, Hagman said.

He noted that since Dover's City Council adopted the fire suppression ordinance into the city codes in 2004, the state fire codes have been tweaked to allow such domes to be built without a fire sprinkler system.

“If we didn’t have this ordinance, then they could build as they want it,” he said. But since Dover has its code, it trumps the state code. To change it would need an amendment by the City Council, which Hagman said he would not support. He is a firm believer that sprinkler systems have not only saved lives of the occupants and firefighters but it has also controlled the need of having a larger Fire Department because many fires are extinguished or kept in control by the sprinkler system.