Some Neighbors Fear Impact of New 16,000 Sq. Ft. Gym at Villa Walsh

Residents living near on Western Avenue told the Morris Township planning board Monday they are concerned that a plan to build a new gymnasium on the campus will increase storm water run-off, create light pollution and remove too many trees.

Villa Walsh, a private Catholic school for girls in grades seven to 12, is seeking to build a 16,266 square-foot gymnasium with a 173-space parking lot adjacent to its existing gym and tennis courts. The new gym will have 336 seats with a mezzanine and first floor meeting rooms.

The school’s application says the new gym is needed to relieve the crowded schedule of events at the old gym.

The school is seeking variances for some parking issues and a variance on the number of replacement trees.

Frank Saia, whose Western Avenue home is directly opposite the proposed location of the new gymnasium, had photographs of the tree stand that separates the athletic site on the school’s campus from the roadway.

Many trees in the stand have fallen, Saia said. He said they began falling shortly after the tennis courts were built.

The planning board heard testimony Monday from Carl Jenne of Jenne Associates, the project’s engineer. Jenne said the goals of the gym project is to replace many of those trees with evergreens that will act as a buffer between the parking lot and the homes.

Jenne said he spend part of a day with Saia’s wife, Tracy, to determine an approximate height on the new trees so they would block the view of neighbors.

Using a red safety vest, Jenne said he walked the property and placed the vest at different heights to test its visibility from the Saia home, which is at a lower elevation than the construction site.

That test, Jenne said, determined that they need trees at least 8.1 feet tall, and said he noted on the plans that the new trees most likely need to be at least 10 feet tall.

Frank Saia showed photos of the vest hanging from a pole near the crest of the slope and wondered if the screening plan was adequate to block the view of the parking lot lights.

Neighbor John Duff asked whether a different style of lighting could be used to reduce the brightness. He suggested bollard lights or lights directed to the ground instead of the planned lights on the tops of poles, a traditional parking lot configuration.

Jenne said that there are minimum lighting standards for parking lots and that the lighting types Duff suggested would not illuminate the parking lot sufficiently to meet those standards.

Noah Szporn, who lives on Rolling Hill Road, another street adjacent to the construction site, said he was concerned about the falling trees and asked Jenne if a study of the health of the trees was done to determine which trees might remain.

Szporn said it appeared that many of the trees could have been damaged by previous construction.

Jenne said he was not present during that construction and could not comment on it. It was possible that trees had root damage or were just poor trees and any of the recent high-wind storms could have taken them down.

Szporn asked if plans could be made so that such tree damage “does not happen again.”

Jenne said trees as far as 250 feet from the site of the proposed gym are being examined, some of which are nowhere near the ridgeline close to the construction site. He said the project must replace the estimated 132 trees that will be removed by the construction and so far they have identified spots where 30 to 50 additional trees could be replanted.

The key concern raised by the residents was storm water run-off and poor drainage.

Frank Saia said that because his house is below the grade of the street, the township built a drainage ditch around his property. He said the area is plagued by storm run-off .

Jenne said the drainage system Villa Walsh is planning will handle, onsite, all the storm water generated by up to a 100-year storm.

The system will include drains on the parking lots that will empty into an underground arched pipe that will have a gravel bottom. All the storm water will be funneled into that system and reenter the ground without leaving the Villa Walsh property.

Jenne said that based on the descriptions given by the residents, in severe storms, and certainly in a 100-year storm, that being the worst storm to hit in 100 years, the problem they would have with run-off would be caused by local street conditions, and not by any water leaving the Villa Walsh site.

 The public hearing was continued to May 16.