Neighbors to Baltimore Lutheran School and the controversial “circus tent” will get to have their turn to interrogate Baltimore County officials about why they approved the structure they consider an eyesore and public nuisance.
Residents along Towson?s Concordia Drive hope a meeting with the county?s zoning commissioner will end an increasingly tense feud with officials from the adjacent private school over a five-story canopy converted to indoor athletic fields. Community leaders said the county should never have permitted the tent and should have required the school to seek special permission to rent its fields to outside organizations ? a practice they say clogs streets with illegally parked cars.
“They?re operating a commercial venture,” resident George Ward said. “It?s one thing for the school to have contests between their school and another. But when you start renting your facility to outside organizations, that?s a whole different matter.”
The meeting, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed due to snow. School headmaster Randy Gast has said the school?s expansion, which is slated to include an 800-seat worship and fine arts center, is necessary to accommodate a surge in enrollment. In the last four years, enrollment has grown from 295 to at least 500, Gast said.
The field house, as he called it, will eventually hold two soccer fields, or six volleyball courts, or three basketball courts or three tennis courts. The county approved the canopy, which the school bought from a now-closed Baltimore nightclub, in 2004 as a “minor commercial structure,” which allowed the school to bypass several community input stages.
Members of the Chatterleigh Community Association said the school does not provide adequate parking, bathrooms and security for outside groups. The school recently signed a contact allowing the Baltimore-based University Lacrosse organization to set up its “training and playing” center at the school, according to a statement from the group.
The school has retained former County Zoning Commissioner Arnold Jablon as its attorney. Neighbors, some who commiserate on a Web site and stage protests outside the school, can appeal any decision the sitting zoning commissioner makes in the case, said their attorney, Mike Tanczyn.
“His answers will give guidance to all parties,” Tanczyn said.
