AmesTrib.com (Iowa)
Proposed Iowa State Sports Complex Stalls Due To Drainage Concerns
February 16, 2011 /
In a second public meeting Tuesday night, ISU Vice President for Business and Finance Warren Madden and about 150 people, including ISU students crowding the back of the room, met to discuss residents’ concerns about site drainage. ISU Athletic Director Jamie Pollard was also at the meeting.
The revised plans for the $13 million project still include placing a track, soccer fields, a softball stadium and locker facilities on the site, but it moves the stadium farther to the south and away from its original situation along Storm Street to the north. The new plan also preserves a large area of open green space along the northwest corner of the site.
A stormwater detention pond along Ash Avenue on the northeast side of the site was judged to be “inadequate” by many residents who spoke at the meeting. They said they have struggled with ongoing stormwater and sewage problems in the neighborhood and believe additional burdens on the city’s stormwater and sewer systems would only intensify those problems for homeowners.
“I have sewage in my basement on a regular basis that I think is going to be aggravated by this arrangement,” said Mark Schmitz, who lives on Ash Avenue. “I don’t think the scale of this problem is really understood.”
Madden told the crowd that while the university intends to manage stormwater runoff under the requirements of state law, the city of Ames had jurisdiction over the local infrastructure.
“I’m not minimizing the fact that there might be storm sewer and sanitary sewer issues, but we don’t believe this project will adversely affect these systems,” Madden said.
Residents repeatedly told Madden they expected the city and the university to work together.
Joan Bolin, who lives on Hughes Street, asked for more cooperation between the city, university and neighborhood.
“You say it’s the city; the city says it’s you. And we sit in between with nowhere to turn,” Bolin said. “We support athletics here … but the athletic people don’t live across the street from this, and we do.”
She and others asked for a committee or three-way meeting between Ames, ISU and the neighborhood.
Resident Bob Harvey waved a copy of a storm sewer map he got from City Hall and warned Madden that not knowing the capacity of the current infrastructure could be the project’s “Achilles heel.”
Residents also asked questions about parking, lighting and noise levels, and suggested the softball stadium move again, this time away from Ash Avenue.
Madden said the outcome of the meeting was as expected and the university would consider the comments before taking the sports complex plans before the Iowa Board of Regents on March 23 in Ames.
The only option not being considered by the university, Madden said, was the suggestion that the athletics department look for another place to build.
“The people who want nothing to happen on that site, we won’t be able to accommodate,” Madden said.
Ames assistant city manager Bob Kindred and municipal engineer Tracy Warner attended the meeting. They told The Tribune that the city and the university had been in contact about the project, but that no formal plans had been submitted for the city to review.
