Park lights debated at town hall

On one side there are soccer players and coaches who want more playing time at James S. Long Regional Park near Haymarket.

On the other side there are the people who live in the surrounding area, who want to keep the area rural.

The thing that divides them? Lights.

About 75 people attended Gainesville district Supervisor John Stirrup’s town hall meeting on proposed changes to the county’s comprehensive plan at Battlefield High School Wednesday night.

About 65 of them said they were there because they want to see field lights installed at Long Park, located off James Madison Highway near Haymarket.

“Right now we have a park that’s usable pretty much between 9 and 5, when most of us are at work,” said Dominion Valley resident Tom Loomis.

Adding lights to fields at the park would give soccer teams a wider time frame to schedule games and practices, Loomis said.

“I think adding lights also opens the park for other types of utilization,” Loomis said, adding that many adults in the area may be interested in soccer leagues and flag football leagues, if the park were open later.

A proposed change to the county’s comprehensive plan could prevent lights from coming to the park.

The change, recommended by the planning commission, would specify that community facilities, such as parks in rural areas, should not use sports field lighting, Ray Utz, the county’s chief of long range planning, said at the meeting.

Long Park sits in an area known as the Rural Crescent, which spans 80,000 acres in the western and southern parts of the county. The area was dubbed the Rural Crescent by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in 1998 and development there is limited to 10-acre lots, although some parts of it were already zoned for or developed at higher density prior to 1998.

But as the area around the Rural Crescent grows, the need for things such as lighted soccer fields is also growing, some said at Wednesday’s meeting.

Members of the Virginia Soccer Association said the soccer fields at Long Park are the best in the western end of the county.

In a message to members posted on VSA’s Web site, VSA President Dave Milne encouraged parents to come to the Gainesville town hall meeting and another meeting scheduled in the Brentsville District next week and speak in favor of lights at the soccer fields.

“They say that lights at ball fields are inconsistent with the rural lifestyle that people in the Rural Crescent desire.  Personally, I don’t think they could be farther from reality,” Milne wrote on the Web site. “As I travel about the state and through small towns everywhere, the one thing I consistently see is the lights on at the local soccer, football or baseball fields as their citizens enjoy an evening of recreation.”

At the town hall meeting, about seven people, most of whom said they lived in the Rural Crescent, said they were opposed to lighting fields at Long Park.

Edith Kennedy said she lives near the park and can hear noise from soccer games and practices some nights. She said she doesn’t want that noise to last later.

“I go to bed at nine and I like quiet when I go to bed,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said her family has lived in the Rural Crescent since the 1950s and they and their neighbors want it to stay rural.

“We don’t want to see light from the soccer fields. We want to still be able to see the fireflies at night,” Kennedy said. “We want to preserve what is left of the rural area.”

Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 703-878-8014.