Neighbors of the Kycia Farm property in Wethersfield won at least a partial victory when the town council pulled back the controversial proposal to build a sports complex there, agreeing instead to search the town for the best site.

Residents on Monday night slammed the original idea, declaring that the 32-acre Kycia Farm would be the wrong place for any large-scale athletics center, particularly a tent-like “sports bubble” with sports facilities rented to the public.

“I don’t want to see a big commercial mega-complex here. I am passionate about this. The people in my neighborhood don’t want it — we’re a little village,” Morgan Circle homeowner John Scott said at the council’s meeting.

“I’m against a sports complex being built on the farm. We’ve been an active sports family, but a sports complex does not belong on Kycia Farm,” Filomena Marinelli of Stone Gate Drive said. “Such a complex would create huge traffic problems and noise.”

By last week, numerous homes around the Kycia Farm area had lawn signs reading “community, not complex.” Some residents went on Facebook community pages to urge their neighbors to attend the council’s meeting and express opposition.

After hearing more than an hour and a half of residents’ complaints about the idea, several council members told the audience that the plan they were considering had changed since the original version came out earlier this month.

“If you think a mega-complex is coming here, someone misled you, they misinformed you intentionally,” council member Daniel O’Connor told the crowd. “There was a lot of misinformation.”

And there never was a plan for a commercial sports bubble, O’Connor said.

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Nevertheless, residents said they felt left in the dark about the original proposal, and several argued that the council hadn’t done enough to be transparent and clear about its intentions.

The council’s revised resolution directs the town manager to research “possible opportunities for development of a multipurpose sports and recreation complex and additional sports field in town” by Feb. 15.

The resolution advises that search should cover “town-owned and privately-owned properties.” That would cover Kycia Farm, but also any empty lands along the Berlin Turnpike or the Silas Deane Highway, where residents said highway access would be vastly better and neighborhood opposition would be minimal.

The original resolution specified Kycia Farm as the only property to be reviewed, but that reference was deleted in the new one.

“I completely understand all the apprehension, especially if you live in the neighborhood,” council member Kevin Hill told the audience after Monday night’s hearing.

“Many people have let their imagination run away with them with regard to what we’re attempting to do here,” he added, saying the non-binding resolution doesn’t appropriate money, authorize construction or preclude other uses of Kycia Farm.

The new resolution keeps the funding plan for construction intact: The town would use some of its remaining $4 million in federal COVID-19 relief aid.

The council Monday night unanimously passed the new version of the resolution, which describes the goals as “an indoor and outdoor complex with artificial turf as well as natural fields capable of supporting football, soccer, field hockey, baseball, softball, lacrosse and track and other extracurricular programs.”

When the council revised its proposal, it also cut a line stating that Kycia “cannot legally be sold or subdivided for private development purposes per bond counsel.”

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Resident Robert Young, a critic of the town’s purchase of Kycia in 2018, said this was the first time he’d heard any town officials saying the property couldn’t legally be sold for development.

The town government wouldn’t give him a copy of the bond counsel’s opinion, he said, or otherwise explain the conclusion that the $2.4 million purchase precluded selling the land later.

Young has long said the town overpaid for property that it didn’t have any plan to use. He’s critical of building a large-scale sports complex without projecting the annual operating costs.

Young wants Wethersfield to sell the land to a developer for a 55-and-older housing development that would generate taxes without bringing more children to the school system. He said that’s the best way to recoup the $2.4 million expense.

Many advocates for buying Kycia are advocating for preserving open space, perhaps creating hiking trails and even fostering a nonprofit working farm on some of the acreage.