Traffic, noise from new Columbia Fireflies baseball stadium bother some neighbors

When she arrived at her Henderson Street home around 9:30 Thursday night, Elizabeth Marks had nowhere to park.

New Columbia Fireflies fans had left their cars throughout the Robert Mills neighborhood in downtown Columbia, against the advice of city officials, and Marks instead had to park at a friend’s nearby lot and walk home.

And then, she said, came intrusive crowd and firework noise that residents had hoped wouldn’t accompany the return of minor league baseball to Columbia.

“The sound was huge,” said Marks, president of the Robert Mills neighborhood association. “You could absolutely hear the ballpark. You could hear the crowd, you could hear the P.A. system. The fireworks were incredibly loud.”

Some Robert Mills and Cottontown/Bellevue neighborhood residents aren’t thrilled about noise and traffic that spilled over from the Fireflies’ home opener. And some blame the city for not preventing the problems.

“I don’t think it is an issue with the ballpark,” Marks said. “I think this is an issue with city management.”

City Councilman Howard Duvall, who drove through the neighborhoods before and after the game, said Columbia officials expected the “growing pains.”

The Fireflies’ 10-minute postgame fireworks show was the most significant cause for heartburn.

“It sounded like somebody was playing drums up in my attic,” said Joshua McDuffie, who lives in Cottontown/Bellevue. “It sounds like artillery fire.”

Duvall said he thought the show was “excessively long and excessively loud.”

The fireworks show likely will be the most complex issue to solve, said City Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine, who got a “mixed bag” of calls about fireworks and traffic after the game.

Contracts limit the city’s ability to restrict the team’s use of fireworks, she said. But the city could work with team officials on a “good faith” solution, Duvall said.

Fireflies owner Jason Freier said his staff heard from some neighbors who enjoyed the fireworks and asked when the team would shoot them again. But, he said, the team’s fireworks staff will shorten the show’s length and focus on using more visual-oriented shells than noisy ones.

The fireworks shows generally will happen only after Friday and Saturday games, Freier said.

“We want to be good neighbors,” he said. “We care what people say and think. We’re going to try to make some adjustments so we can find some ground that we can live with and that neighbors can live with.”

Easing traffic and parking complaints should be easier, city officials said. Slow-moving traffic around Spirit Communications Park caused frustration for drivers and neighborhood residents alike.

Some fans complained they were held up as much as an hour trying to reach Fireflies-provided parking lots from Bull Street, Harden Street or Elmwood Avenue. Others parked on neighborhood streets and walked.

One police barricade at Marion Street and Confederate Avenue sent some confused drivers in a loop, residents said. Paul Bouknight, the Cottontown/Bellevue neighborhood president, said he counted a few cars going past his house three or four times.

“But that’s easy to fix,” Bouknight said. “It was opening night.”

Mayor Steve Benjamin said he heard from one resident complaining but that the city would work with the Fireflies on solutions.

"There's going to be some growing pains, and we're going to work through them," Benjamin said. "These things, we can work through."

City officials said possible solutions include providing a greater police presence to direct traffic or installing permitted parking in neighborhoods that request it.

“With everything new, you’re going to have some angst and some growing pains,” Devine said. “You’re going to have to learn form what works and what doesn’t. I hope that people can be a little patient.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 5:59 PM with the headline "Traffic, noise from new Columbia Fireflies baseball stadium bother some neighbors."