A plan for a new soccer complex in Silver Spring moved ahead Thursday, despite a racially tinged, years-long battle over the facility.
Montgomery Planning Board members approved about $5.5 million for a new athletic field, paths, playground and landscaping at the North Four Corners Local Park at University Boulevard and Southwood Avenue.
Memos from Parks and Planning staff about the field have cited the county’s growing need for soccer fields as the community becomes more ethnically diverse.
Residents are vowing to persist in their fight against the facility.
Northwood Four Corners Civic Association President Carole Ann Barth said she and others are concerned creating a new field will disrupt a community’s open green space, require cutting down trees and ultimately add to traffic congestion in the area.
Parks and planning officials said the plan adopted will provide additional buffers from field activity for some residents and leave a portion of the new park area in its current state, but Barth said the fact any bulldozing and reconfiguration of the land will occur is upsetting.
“Really, what they approved didn’t meet our concerns at all,” Barth said. “It’s like no matter which way you arrangethe deck chairs on the Titanic, the ship is still going down.”
Montgomery Department of Parks Landscape Architect Heidi Sussmann said in a written statement that the “purpose for this project has always been to provide the best park possible.”
Barth says she plans to reach out to 300 community members who signed a petition opposing the project and ask the County Council to intervene.
During the initial phases of the proposal, some supporters intimated that opponents of the plan were actually concerned about the arrival of the many Hispanics who use the county’s existing fields.
Residents, including some Hispanics, opposed to the plan cited the litter and unruly behavior they observed at other fields.
Construction is not likely to begin until around 2012.
