An update on whether the University of Connecticut will assess the environmental impact of a golf facility proposal continues to be delayed after growing opposition over the site location, according to the UConn spokesperson.
An approximate schedule, given at a Jan. 7 public scoping meeting for the facility, said a post-scoping notice would be available in February, announcing whether an Environmental Impact Evaluation is needed. The Connecticut Environmental Policy Act (CEPA) requires proposals by state agencies like UConn that could significantly affect the environment to determine what evaluation steps are needed, according to the Office of Policy and Management.
Stephanie Reitz, the university spokesperson, said the notice will include one of three possible recommendations: for the project to not to go forward, for an Environmental Impact Evaluation to be conducted or to continue pursuing the golf facility without an evaluation. Reitz said in March that the target date for the post-scoping notice was delayed until April as consultants actively worked on it.
May is the new target date for the post-scoping notice announcing UConn’s recommendation for the facility, Reitz said.
“Although UConn had targeted the information to be finalized this month, the university needed more time to address the large volume of inquiries received about the proposal and instead expects to finalize and publish it in May,” Reitz said.
Inquiries into the project were accepted between Dec. 16, 2025, when the proposal was published in the Connecticut Environmental Monitor,and Jan. 16, 2026. Those opposing the project have organized in various ways since the public comment period ended.
Laura Tordenti, a resident who lives directly across from the proposal, was one of the organizers for a community information meeting on the facility held at the Mansfield Public Library on April 20. The meeting maxed out the library’s parking lot capacity and was attended by around 150of mostly concerned Mansfield residents and UConn students.
Records received by The Daily Campus show that Mansfield residents like Tordenti have been raising concerns about golf facility plans over the UConn Conifer Collection for multiple years. Tordenti was one of the first to be made aware about the scoping notice for the facility after communicating with Laura Cruickshank, the retired associate vice president of university planning, design and construction, about a possible golf facility in July 2023.
“Our office is unaware of any plans or funding to physically develop or alter the property at this time, there has been no change to that status since our meeting with you… last summer,” Cruickshank wrote to Tordenti in 2023.
The status changed when UConn’s director of site planning, Sean Vasington, reached out to Tordenti on Dec. 15, 2025, one day before the scoping notice was posted to the Connecticut Environmental Monitor.
“I am following up on Laura’s last email and our commitment to let you know we are proceeding with a project for the previously developed portion of the property,” Vasington wrote, noting how a scoping notice would appear the next morning and that the CEPA comment period would end one month afterward.