No Breithaupt ball diamond lights – yet

City staff will take the summer to monitor the impact on worried neighbourhood residents

KITCHENER — A decision on whether to add lights to two ball diamonds at Breithaupt Park will be put off until the end of the summer.

City staff had recommended installing lights at the two diamonds — the only skinned clay fields in the city not equipped with lights — as a cheaper way of getting more playing time out of existing fields.

But residents came to Kitchener’s community services committee earlier this month to plead with councillors not to put in the lights, saying the diamonds already cause a numbers of problems for people who live near the park.

They complained about litter, noise, parking problems and unruly behaviour and feared those problems would only get worse if games went on until 11 p.m.

City councillors asked staff to meet with residents to see what the city could do to lessen the impact of the lights on those who live nearby.

After meeting with residents this week, staff are now saying they need the summer to monitor what goes on during the games and study how to better address parking.

A report is to come back to council before

the end of August, said Mark Parris, the landscape architect with the city who is heading the project.

Residents felt they were heard at this week’s meeting and were “somewhat pleased” to see the city was willing to work to tackle their concerns, said Angela Larraguibel, one of the residents at the meeting.

But as staff made it clear the lights will have to go in this fall to be ready for the 2018 ball season, residents fear there isn’t much time to come up with solutions to some problems.

The city will see if more parking can be directed away from residential streets and into the lot at the Breithaupt Centre and consider installing portable toilets, but other problems seem to be much tougher to tackle, Larraguibel said.

“We’re still worried that the proposals we’ve heard from the city thus far only address some of the issues,” she said.

“No one has offered up solutions that deal with the light pollution and the noise from the extended game times,” proposed to run until 11 p.m. four nights a week.

Kitchener Minor Baseball says its board will consider at its next board meeting whether to look at tougher measures, such as suspensions or game defaults, against teams that behave badly.

It will also encourage players and spectators to park at Breithaupt Centre rather than on residential streets, said Ron Mooibroek, the association’s president.

There will always be some noise at any ball game, Mooibroek said, but the association will be reminding people to keep noise to a minimum, and to carry out postgame conversations away from nearby homes, for instance.

“We’re part of the community, and we value being a community organization,” Mooibroek said. “Sometimes people forget that there’s a neighbourhood around them. We’re just telling people, be mindful, be cognizant and be respectful.”