Residents praise, vilify plans to light fields

Erika Pierce is a softball enthusiast, having played the sport for 12 years. And she does not want to see local fields go.

“We don’t live in the country,” said Pierce, who lives in Albemarle County’s Fontana neighborhood, just next to Darden Towe Park. “We knew that development was going to happen.”

Pierce was one of several local residents who gathered at the Elk’s Lodge, near the entrance of Darden Towe Park, on Thursday to voice praise for or concern about the proposal to light the park’s softball fields.

“We’re excited to keep the softball fields going,” she said.

As a result of the 70,000-square-foot YMCA coming to Charlottesville’s McIntire Park — which will eliminate its two softball fields to allow for additional parking and a multi-sport rectangular field — new lighting is being proposed for the softball field at Charlottesville High School and the three at Darden Towe.

Though the lights would shut off at 10 p.m., several local residents have spoken adamantly against lighted fields at Darden Towe, saying the daytime park was never meant to have them. Mike Powers, who also lives in the Fontana neighborhood, said he has children who need to sleep and don’t need field lighting and noise from softball players and traffic filling their rooms.

“At the top of the hill we can hear everything that goes on down there,” Powers said.

The concept for the park, which is jointly owned by the city and county, was conceived in the 1980s after the localities acquired the land.

On May 7, 2007, Charlottesville’s City Council and Albemarle’s Board of Supervisors approved the current agreement for the park, which states that no athletics field or recreational facility lighting would occur without the consent of both localities.

The county and city will each hold a public hearing on the possible lighting, on Oct. 8 and Oct. 20, respectively. But Kenneth C. Boyd, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said he decided to hold the community meeting Thursday because of past experience with the issue — a former president of the Key West Homeowners Association, he previously opposed lighting the fields.

“It was a very contentious and an emotional issue then,” Boyd said in an interview.

City Councilor Julian Taliaferro, who serves on the Darden Towe Park Committee with Boyd, was also present Thursday, along with city and county parks and recreation staff.

Robbi Savage, executive director of the Rivanna Conservation Society, said in an interview that the community meeting would help gauge how installing lights would affect the entire area.

“Lighting specifically isn’t an environmental issue for the health and wealth of the river,” she said. “But it’s not clear what the full impact of the activities will be.”

Boyd noted that the area around the park has become busier because of increased development at Pantops and because of the construction of newer neighborhoods, such as Fontana.

“This will impact both sides of the river,” he said.

Lighting Darden Towe would cost between $500,000 and $700,000, with the bill split 70 percent to 30 percent between the county and city. With county officials recently projecting a $4.1 million budget deficit, Key West neighborhood resident Tom Weaver wondered how taxpayers would front the cost.

“Obviously, this is a pretty big number,” Weaver said.

Clara Belle Wheeler, a longtime critic of lighting Darden Towe who lives on a farm adjacent to the park, agreed it would be an unfair burden on residents.

“If you don’t have the money for it, don’t even dream about it,” she said.