GUEST OPINION
(Photo – Sarah Wolf. Aerial map – Baeri Penn)
Pasadena’s Polytechnic School submitted plans to L.A. County to build ‘Poly Fields,’ an athletics campus in the Altadena foothills.
By Michael D. Bicay
AltadenaWILD Directors are shocked (bemused?) to review the Poly Fields proposal and see it described repeatedly as “low intensity.”
Really? The plans include: a football/soccer/athletics stadium and a baseball stadium (each with bleachers), six tennis courts, night lighting, batting cages, a training facility, a fitness center, a coach’s building, a wellness center, storage buildings, and an underground parking structure for 208 vehicles. Guarding over the closed campus would be a wall, fence, and a “security lodge.”
If approved by the County, this campus will bring many hundreds of people onto the site regularly. Chaney Trail, a narrow and hilly road used frequently by hikers, cyclists and equestrians is proposed as the sole access road. Building Poly Fields would require 211,000 cubic yards of dirt to be hauled away, equivalent to 17,500 regular dump trucks. More than 240 trees would be removed, including seven coast live oaks. Low intensity? Hardly.
Poly seeks to build their private playground in a State-designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. It would be adjacent to a County-designated Significant Ecological Area, a Rural Outdoor Lighting District and the recently expanded San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The plans make absurd claims that there will be no adverse effects in the surrounding areas.
Night Lighting
Poly wants to erect up to twenty 75-foot tall lights and up to fourteen 30- to 40-foot tall lights. The base of these light poles will be 100+ feet higher in elevation than nearby homes to the south. Engineering solutions will not prevent light leakage in the surrounding neighborhoods and wilderness areas. [It should be noted that Pasadena prohibits such lighting on Poly’s main urban campus.] There is little doubt that wildlife and its migration patterns will be disrupted by the bright lights and amplified sounds coming from the sports complex. The recreational value of the Altadena Crest Trail and surrounding foothills will be diminished.
Poly’s proposed development is grossly inappropriate for the site. Over 6,200 residents, mostly in Altadena and Pasadena, have signed an online petition of opposition. Many offers to help defeat this ill-conceived notion have come from area residents, non-profit organizations – and from Poly alumni! We invite you to join the movement to protect and preserve our precious Altadena foothills for future generations.
Dr. Michael D. Bicay is the President of AltadenaWILD and a former NASA astrophysicist.
Poly Fields is wrong on so many levels. The hubris on display here from the Poly administration is truly astonishing. Not on my watch, you won’t! Go back to where you came from and leave Altadena for good. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE!
It’s hard to imagine this project getting approved based on the multi year construction impacts to the immediate area alone. And if those are somehow mitigated to the satisfaction of Altadena residents, the ongoing vehicle traffic would compound already congested intersections, particularly in the afternoon when any of the dozen local schools are having their students picked up. Living on the likely truck haul route, I will be watching this closely.
The congestion will be unbearable with hundreds of people all driving to and leaving a hosted game or event at the same time (day or night)… Google/Wayze will re-route cars to other local roads and Loma Alta will be a parking lot.
If the light pollution is NOT allowed in a densely populated urban neighborhood at the current location in Pasadena, where is the sense in using a quiet suburban location surrounded by nature and wilderness for this monstrosity???
Imagine if even a fraction of these resources were available for public school children.
Once we destroy this natural area it is gone forever.
Spread this widely, y’all!!!!!!!