Tacoma’s Annie Wright school can’t light soccer stadium, city decides

In a decision that wholly pleases no one, the city of Tacoma has approved a private school’s request to expand its soccer field, but denied its request to install athletic lights.

“We are extremely disappointed that lighting wasn’t included,” said Christian Sullivan, head of schools for Annie Wright, a historic school nestled in the Stadium District neighborhood. “It’s a really perplexing decision. We will read it closely (this) week before deciding what to do.”

Said John Xitco, a restaurateur who lives on the bluff immediately abouve the soccer field, “The city nailed it in terms of denying the lights.” But, he said Monday, the city shouldn’t have allowed the field’s expansion. Neighbors believe the city “made some considerable mistakes in some areas, in the decision. We’re exploring our options.”

The city’s land-use decision, announced Friday afternoon, is open for appeals until Oct. 9. An appeal would go before a hearing examiner, a city official independent of the department that issues or denies permits.

The saga of upgrading Annie Wright’s soccer field began more than a year ago, when the school proposed replacing its grass field with synthetic turf, adding 80-foot-tall athletic field lights, and building an 8,775-square-foot auxiliary gym onto its existing Kemper Center. Annie Wright’s campus is surrounded by single-family homes in a historic district. The soccer field sits on a slope midway between two sets of houses.

Annie Wright was founded in the 1880s and has been at 827 N. Tacoma Ave. since 1924 and educates 480 students. It’s co-ed through 8th grade, and girls-only for high school.

The school operates under various city permits that retroactively allow school activities in a residential neighborhood. One of those, a conditional use permit, had to be modified to allow the athletic lighting and soccer field expansion. Upgrading the school’s athletic facilities has been part of the school’s long-term plan, Sullivan said. The current field can’t be used much because it’s grass and gets very muddy during the height of soccer season in fall.

The possibility of 80-foot poles and light spilling into people’s homes alarmed neighbors almost immediately. As they looked at the school’s full proposal, they also became concerned with the expansion of the field itself because it will be built using more dirt and a retaining wall in a designated “landslide hazard area.” Because the field is going from grass to synthetic turf, the school also proposed a custom stormwater system to manage the rain that would run off the site.

In early October 2014, the school hosted an open house where it heard from neighbors about its plans.

Based on their concerns, the school made a new proposal that reduced the height of the light poles from 80 feet to 50 feet, and chose a lighting system that promises light control measures but is more difficult to operate than standard athletic lights. The also school promised to turn the lights off by 8 p.m.

School officials have said that “for many months of the year, lights won’t be used,” Sullivan said. “We thought it was a modest and reasonable proposal.”

It wasn’t enough. City Planning and Development Services Director Peter Huffman, who issued the permit decision, said Monday that the city used the school’s own study of how the light would affect nearby properties to determine it was too much, based on the standards for “light trespass” found in city code. Those standards are set for parking lots near residential homes, but Huffman’s decision said “it is reasonable, therefore, for a neighboring property owner to assume that athletic field lighting would also not be allowed to exceed this standard.”

And even at 50 feet, the height of the proposed poles was double what is allowed in districts like Stadium that have a “view-sensitive overlay.”

The decision also required the school to add 14 more parking spaces to the 46 it already has, as well as reminding the school that it must add more parking as its enrollment increases.

Sullivan said the school plans to move ahead with the field upgrade and expansion. Construction will have to be done in a way that avoids a bald eagle’s nest on nearby property. The school received another permit that requires a 330-foot buffer from construction activity around the nest, as well as limiting the time work can happen to “no earlier than two hours after dawn and no later than two hour before dusk.”

Xitco said he and his neighbors remain concerned about the possibility of landslides related to the expanded field.

“We’re on a slope,” he said. “That’s definitely something we’ll be looking into.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 2:33 PM with the headline "Tacoma’s Annie Wright school can’t light soccer stadium, city decides."