Foxborough Moving Forward with New Rink at Sports Center

Foxboro Sports Center representatives came before the town’s Planning Board Thursday to review its plan to add a third rink to the East Belcher Road skating complex.

The rink is proposed to be built adjacent to the current building where the parkin lot stands. Along with the rink, the plan will add an additional 110 parking spaces.

The new lot will be built on a new parcel and will allow patrons to enter and exit from Spring Brook Road.

The board’s reaction to the plan was generally positive, but some members voiced concerns regarding lighting, parking and traffic.

Planning Board vice chair Bill Grieder said his main concern was the traffic and parking problems that occur during high school hockey events.

“I think that we’ve heard of tremendous parking and traffic problems,” he said.

Sports Center owner Rich Touzos said they are addressing the problem not only with the extra spaces, but with no new league games on the new rink, which he said would decrease the need for many extra spaces.

“Any high school event you go to there’s parking problems,” he said. “We’re not going to increase the activity during high school events.”

The board also had concerns for lighting during events. They said they may need extra lighting near the East Belcher Road entrance because it is hard to see pedestrians when entering and exiting.

“[Right now] we have both sides of East Belcher lined with cars,” said board member Ron Bresse.

Rob Truax, GLM engineer representing the Sports Center, said there were many options they could explore, including a car parking ban on East Belcher (that would also allow buses to park there] or using a parking lot down Spring Brook Road.

Touzos said he opened the rink nine years ago with the intention of making it “the cradle of college.”

“It’s been nine years and a lot of it has really happened,” he said. “We’ve been putting kids into Division I and Division III, we have kids playing the NHL now … We had 11 kids in the NHL draft in the past two years, all from Foxborough.”