Hoover High Towers

Kensington/Talmadge — Seventy-year-old Hoover High School wants to make some major renovations to their sports facilities, including new bleachers, restrooms, a press box, new entrances to the fields, and 90-foot light towers so they can host nighttime football games and other events. The project has been planned since 2006, with construction set to begin in May of 2009 and end in November of 2010.

But residents of Kensington/Talmadge are not playing along. Instead, they are looking to sack the project. The problem, say the Kensington residents, is that night games and events will bring more crime, noise, traffic, and trash into their quiet, single-family residential neighborhood.

The residents created a website listing the reasons they oppose the high school’s renovations. “The nightly activity from school night games and recreation group field usage has been and will continue to be indecent or offensive to the senses.... [S]uch activity has created an obstruction to the free use of property, and has interfered with the comfortable enjoyment of life and property.”

Members of the community have raised their concerns to the school board and contacted newly inducted District 3 councilmember Todd Gloria.

“Councilmember Gloria does not yet have a final position on Hoover’s capital improvements,” says council representative Travis Knowles. “That said, Councilmember Gloria, as well as the local community, is in favor of most of the improvements. The main concern among the community is the addition of lights to the football field and the impacts on the neighborhood resulting from night games. A lot of the community opposition to the current project has resulted from poor communication between the school district and the neighbors, particularly relating to issues surrounding use of the football field.”

“Councilmember Gloria is seeking to build trust through renewed dialogue and hopes to find a compromise solution that both the school district and the community can support. As the project is still in its design phase, an opportunity remains for such a compromise to develop.”

For more information on the project and the community’s efforts to sideline the renovations, visit their website at bajatalmadge.org.