Court orders review of light towers
When St. Ignatius College Preparatory in the Outer Sunset District proposed to install 90-foot light towers at its stadium to allow more night football games, San Francisco officials decided the installation was too minor to require environmental review. The lights are up and running, but a neighborhood group still says lesser options should be reviewed, and a state appeals court agrees.
“The project will significantly expand the nighttime use of the stadium,” the First District Court of Appeal said last Friday in a ruling ordering the city to conduct an environmental study and consider alternatives. “Without the project, the field is quiet and dark most evenings during the fall and winter months. With the project, the field will be lit and in use approximately 80% of the fall and winter weeknights.”
After the lights were installed and turned on in August, football games formerly scheduled on Saturdays were moved to Friday nights, sending light beams and loud noises into the surrounding neighborhood of singlefamily homes, said Deborah Brown, secretary of the St. Ignatius Neighborhood Association. The sounds drown out television and radio programs and ordinary conversations, she said, and the lights glare for four or five blocks, or more when it’s foggy.
The ruling does not require the school to dismantle the towers, but San Francisco must examine their effect on the neighborhood, including light, noise and increased nighttime traffic, and review options that could reduce their impact. The court reversed a decision by Superior Court Judge Rochelle East that said the project could proceed without environmental review.
Jen Kwart, spokesperson for City Attorney David Chiu, said, “We are disappointed in the outcome and are evaluating any potential next steps.” Chiu could ask the state Supreme Court to review the ruling.
The high school is on 37th Avenue in the Outer Sunset, and its 2,000-seat stadium is at 39th Avenue and Rivera Street. In approving the tower installation, which the school had requested in 2018, the Board of Supervisors imposed some restrictions, allowing the lights to remain on until 10 p.m. only 15 nights per year, and requiring St. Ignatius to increase off-site parking and install trees to shield the field and the lights from nearby homes.
In rejecting neighborhood groups’ demand for a full environmental review, city officials cited a provision of state law that exempts projects from such review if they are only “minor alteration of existing public or private structures.” They noted that the school was not proposing to enlarge the stadium and was already holding some night football games there with temporary lighting.
But the court said the temporary lights were available no more than 50 nights a year, while the new towers could be lit as often as 150 nights each year — not merely a “minor alteration,” the justices said. The law also says an environmental study is not required for the addition of small structures, like homes and modest commercial buildings, but the court said the project does not fit that description.
San Francisco’s zoning rules limit the height of residential buildings in the area to 40 feet; the typical home is 20 to 25 feet tall; and the average street light in the neighborhood is 25 to 30 feet high, Justice Stuart Pollak observed in the 3-0 ruling.
“A 90-foot tall light standard does not qualify as ‘small’ within the meaning of the exemption,” Pollak wrote. He said the purpose of the review that state law requires “is not necessarily to kill the project but to require careful consideration of measures that will mitigate the environmental impacts of the project.”