The chairman of the Sculpture Fields at Montague Park is calling on supporters to contact the City Council as the panel readies to consider a 40-year lease of 13 adjacent acres to the Chattanooga FC Foundation.
“We think the juxtaposition of the boisterousness of youth soccer fields with the serenity of the park is not in the best interest of either the park or youth soccer,” said William J. Overend, who is chairman of the Sculpture Fields board, in a letter to supporters.
Overend said the effort isn’t against youth soccer. The Sculpture Fields has its own plans for the 13-acre tract at 1151 E. 23rd St. which sits next to the 33 acres it already occupies.
“With three CFC Foundation soccer fields in Highland Park and two more being built as part of the renovation of the Standard-Coosa-Thatcher property, the area does not want for soccer fields,” he said. “In contrast, East Lake and Alton Park have no soccer facilities for their youth to play.”
Overend said in the email that “political forces” at work have brought the situation to its current state.
“We need your help to ensure that those who have tunnel vision about the use of the land be enlightened to a broader reality,” he said.
On Aug. 24, the City Council has the long-term lease on its agenda. Terms call for leasing the site at $1 a year.
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly is a co-founder of Chattanooga Football Club and was its chairman until he stepped down after winning a runoff election for political office in April.
Krue Brock, who directs the nonprofit foundation, has said there’s “a complete firewall” between the CFC and the foundation.
He said the programming of the three planned soccer fields at Montague would be similar to what the foundation manages at Highland Park Commons in the Highland Park neighborhood. Brock said around 1,000 people a week play there.
The Sculpture Fields plan calls for new art pieces, a 2,000- to 3,000-seat amphitheater and a welcome center in an $8 million to $10 million project.
In May, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission voted to back a proposed lease agreement between the city and foundation.
The city had issued a request for proposals related to the 13-acre parcel at the park under former Mayor Andy Berke. A team of people reviewed proposals, including the Sculpture Fields’, and the CFC Foundation’s was picked late last year.
Warren Barnett, a Sculpture Fields board member, said comments from the public to the planning commission supported a lease for that group and far exceeded remarks endorsing the soccer fields.
Also, an earlier online poll in the Chattanooga Times Free Press showed support for the Sculpture Fields by a two-to-one margin, he said.
“I can’t figure out why the city persists in giving the land to soccer fields when the number is not needed in the immediate area,” Barnett said. “Clearly it’s disruptive to the serenity of the park.”
Barnett also questioned why youth need a planned 22,000-square-foot pavilion among the facilities proposed by the foundation.
“Kids don’t need a 22,000-square-foot facility. Professional athletes do,” he said. “This whole thing doesn’t add up somehow.”
Brock has said that CFC, the professional soccer team founded more than a decade ago, probably wouldn’t play or practice there.
Brock, who heads the nonprofit that offers an after-school and summer soccer program set up in 2015 by the team, said there was “a rigorous process” by the city for choosing what’s to go at the Montague Park site.
The foundation has a multimillion-dollar plan for soccer fields, the pavilion, restrooms, concessions area, lights and 180 parking spaces, plans show.
Brock said the city would not be expected to commit any funds and the work would be financed through donations to the foundation.
Overend said in the letter that Sculpture Fields has designs for building an amphitheater on the additional land, giving Chattanooga its own version of Chastain Park in Atlanta. The land in question is integral to the construction of the amphitheater and its requisite parking, he said.
“Soccer will result in large crowds of youths who, when unsupervised, can potentially both damage the sculptures and harm themselves in the process,” Overend said. “The planned night games with their noise and lights will make an amphitheater an impossibility, assuming a lack of parking does not do the same.”
Due to the re-emergence of the coronavirus, the City Council is limiting access to the Aug. 24 meeting and offering a hybrid format with virtual availability. Overend said there’s a need “to get our voices out to the community so that we can be collectively heard by the City Council and prevail prior to the meeting on August 24 as well as on that date.”
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.