Dreher wants a sports field, neighbors want peace – and they’re still at odds

Even though Dreher High School is willing to scale back its hopeful plans for new athletic facilities on its campus, many of its Columbia residential neighbors aren’t budging: No compromise, no field, no lights, no nothing.

The school and Richland 1 school district say they want to give students at the downtown school the same sports opportunities as their peers at other schools by adding five competition tennis courts and a multiuse, artificial turf field with lights and bleacher seating for up to 700 people.

Three months after a rezoning request from the school was met unfavorably by the city’s Planning Commission, the school and the district are renewing their request at the commission’s Monday meeting.

The school has to be rezoned to a residential classification before it can be considered for a special exception to add the new athletic facilities.

But neighbors in the Heathwood and Melrose Heights neighborhoods near the school remain adamantly opposed to the plan they fear would bring increased lights, noise and traffic near their homes.

Shealy and Betty McCoy, who live across the street from where the lights would stand, don’t trust the school district’s assertion that the lights would have little influence on their home.

“I don’t see myself wanting to live in the light of day every night,” Shealy McCoy said at a public meeting at Dreher last week. “This is not anti-Dreher. This is an issue of quality of life,” he said later.

The lights surrounding the field and tennis courts, which would be used for practices and matches, would be used about 65 times a year, the school district says. The turf field would be used for football practices, junior varsity and middle school football games, soccer games and potentially lacrosse games in the future.

“It’s an emotional issue” on both sides, said Michael Burkett, president of the Dreher booster club. “Dreher’s got great academics, and we’re missing the ability to offer our students the complete package.”

Besides the benefit to Dreher students, who no longer would have to travel for sports practices and some home games, upgrading the school’s athletic facilities is an investment for the city, Burkett said.

In hopes of appeasing its neighbors, the school has revised its original plans for the new facilities. It has cut back the number of seats, cut out a sound system and press box and says it will agree to a 9 p.m. curfew for the lights.

“We just want some fields for our kids,” said David Adams, speaking at last week’s community meeting. Adams is the Richland County treasurer, whose wife, Pamela, used to sit on the Richland 1 school board. “Let’s try to work together.”

But the school’s concessions are not enough for many of the neighbors. They compromised by allowing the school to be rebuilt as large as it is on Millwood Avenue more than a decade ago, some have said, and they’re not compromising again.

“We’ve still got some open wounds from 2003,” Melrose Heights resident Martha Fowler said at last week’s public meeting. “You told us you wouldn’t go back on your word, and darned if you did.”

Fowler and others at the meeting questioned whether the school district has considered putting the field on other nearby properties.

On Monday, the Planning Commission will vote only to recommend whether the school should be rezoned to residential, not to approve or deny the site plan for the proposed athletic facilities.

City Council will have the final say on the zoning matter, taking into consideration the Planning Commission’s recommendation.

Even if the school ultimately gets council’s OK to rezone, it still will have to get a special exception from the city Board of Zoning Appeals to allow the new athletic facilities.

This story was originally published April 2, 2017 at 7:58 PM with the headline "Dreher wants a sports field, neighbors want peace – and they’re still at odds."