$4M renovation starts at Scout camp project

Saturday, September 19, 2009

By Stan Fisher, Register Correspondent

KILLINGWORTH — A $4 million renovation of the Deer Lake Scout Reservation is scheduled to begin this week, a major undertaking to add new facilities that will allow greater use of the rustic camp.

Representatives from the Connecticut Yankee Council of the Boy Scouts of America and union officials broke ground Friday on the first phase of the renovations to add a new dining hall, a bath/shower house, and “Fort Imagine” — a 1,024-square-foot replica of a Western fort — to the Scout reservation.

Louis Salute, the council’s Scout executive, said the Deer Lake project comprises the considerable majority of capital improvements planned for Scout camps in Connecticut.

Salute said the council has embarked on a $4.4 million fundraising campaign to finance the enhancement of its Scouting facilities, and thus far has raised about $1.8 million in donations and pledges.

The Deer Lake project is going forward because the union membership of the Connecticut Building Trades and Construction Council, as well as Operating Engineers Local 478 of Hamden, are volunteering their labor to build the facilities.

Salute estimated the value of the volunteered labor at $1 million or more for the first phase of construction, with the council paying approximately $800,000 for materials.

“Without them, we wouldn’t be able to put this building together,” he said of the new dining hall that will be the first structure to be erected in phase one.

Ben Cozzi, who is president of the trades council and Local 478 and also serves on the Connecticut Yankee Council’s executive board, said the unions have helped the Connecticut scouts with previous projects, and that his personal interest in scouting is lifelong.

“I was a Scout in the ’50s, and I’ve always been interested in it. A lot of people in the trades feel the same way. The lessons you learn in Scouting still help me to this day,” he said.

Cozzi said he expected at least 50 union members would be involved in the construction of the new building — and “a lot of hours are involved” in the project.

At the end of Paper Mill Road, the 253-acre Scout reservation — which features a lake and a considerable number of rustic structures used by the Scouts and other campers — will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2010, and Salute hopes to have the dining hall operational next April.

The second phase of renovations calls for five new staff cabins, two additional bath/shower houses, six campsites with lean-tos, a Cub Scout program area, and a large administration building, as well as new themed areas.

The intent, Cozzi and Salute explained, is to allow Deer Lake to function principally as a Cub Scout camp, with the council’s Camp Sequassen in Torrington and the John Sherman Hoyt Scout Camp in Redding reserved for the older Boy Scouts.

Some $400,000 in renovations are planned for those two facilities.

When the work is complete, Salute expects that Deer Lake will be able to accommodate 1,800 more Cub Scouts than it currently can manage, and create room for 1,000 more participants in the council’s Learning for Life programs at the camp.

About 30,000 young people — two-thirds of them in Scouting and the remainder in other programs — use the facility annually, Salute said.

The renovations will be beneficial for Deer Lake, but not the town’s tax rolls: valued at $3.8 million, the facility is tax-exempt.