Sports fields plan moving forward on Bernal Sports fields plan moving forward on Bernal (April 29, 2005)

Coaches, players call need urgent
by Jeb Bing

The Pleasanton City Council and its Parks and Recreation Commission will meet next month to review plans for the 50-acre sports complex planned along the eastern edge of the new Bernal community park.

The 318-acre Bernal site is located on the open fields across Bernal Avenue from the Fairgrounds, with part of it extending across I-680.

Billed as a workshop meeting, the joint council-commission discussion will focus on completing Phase I of the Bernal park development plan, which will include lighted fields for baseball, soccer, lacrosse and junior league football, with additional unlighted practice fields. The council already has approved construction of the first two of five planned lighted baseball fields and a practice field, with work scheduled to begin this fall.

May's workshop discussion will follow the 2-1/2-hour-long Town Hall meeting held earlier this month, where youth sports enthusiasts, including players, coaches and fans, packed the Pleasanton Senior Center auditorium to urge faster action on the four-year-old sports park plan.

"We rated this as a top priority item in May 2001 when I was on the Bernal Task Force," sports park advocate Joe Russo told the 220 who attended the Town Hall meeting. "We wanted to get these field built quickly, and here we are four years later still talking about it."

Players and coaches talked about their teams having to travel to neighboring cities to find field space since Pleasanton's once heralded spacious Sports Park on Hopyard Road has run out of room. Council candidate Jerry Thorne, who chaired a task force that developed the Bernal sports park design, said he has watched two Pleasanton teams play each other in Richmond because there were no competitive tournament fields available locally.

Although the Town Hall meeting was called to hear public comments on preliminary plans for the entire Bernal parkland, most of the time and most of the speakers dealt with sports. Coaches, along with some of their teams, wore soccer, lacrosse and baseball uniforms, saying they were there to make sure no one tinkered with plans to build sports fields on the city-owned property.

They weren't disappointed.

City planning consultant Wayne Rasmussen and his associate, Landscape Architect Michael Fotheringham, opened the meeting with a PowerPoint presentation that showed the 50-acre sports complex located right where it was three years ago at the first Town Meeting, where scores of speakers called for scaling it back and relocating it. Since then, Thorne, who led a "Save Our Community Park" initiative that gained more than 4,000 signatures, won the support of the council to fund and build the complex, including the startup this year of construction on the first three baseball diamonds.

And, although Rasmussen and Fotheringham insisted that the entire Bernal site is still a "planning document in progress," their five site use plan alternatives appeared to lock in not only the sports complex, but also a cultural arts center and outdoor amphitheater, at least three acres for use by the Pleasanton 4-H club, teen and youth centers and possibly another five acres to relocate the ACE train station from the Fairgrounds parking lot to the Bernal property.

Gone, at least for now, are earlier proposals for a day care center, high school site, park-and-ride lot and a church site.

The Bernal property, once an empty parcel used to grow hay, was purchased by Greenbriar Homes and its associates for $126 million in 2000 from the city of San Francisco, which had owned the land since the 1930s and had proposed building as many as 3,500 homes on the site, a plan that was rejected by Pleasanton officials. In acquiring the site, Greenbriar agreed to give Pleasanton the 318 acres free of charge after the city granted permits to build 581 homes and apartments on part of the property, and to reserve 35 acres for an office park. Most of the residential development has been completed or is nearing completion. The office park has yet to be developed.

At the time of the purchase, the City Council also agreed to build the sports complex as part of Phase I with the balance of the public space to be planned later. Although there were calls to change that focus, Thorne's initiative and the rallying cry at the April 11 Town Meeting has kept the sports complex plan alive, and now apparently heading for a final vote of approval by the council.

The plans shown at the Town Hall meeting also had support from many outside of the sports community, including 4-H club members, teen center advocates and those backing the construction of a cultural arts center.

Dave Wright, president of the Cultural Arts Council, said he supports sports, but also stressed the need to build the cultural arts center nearby because it also will include arts and other programs that will appeal to youths. He and others in the arts community had urged that the center be placed on the eastern edge of the Bernal site, where the sports fields have been designated, so that the cultural arts center would be closer to downtown. Other would prefer that the center be built on Bernal Avenue between the sports fields and homes at the other end.

Longtime community arts leader Charlotte Severin agreed, saying that while she would favor placing the cultural arts center closer to downtown, she opposed an alternate plan that would put it close to I-680.

"I could see the amphitheater being used someday for high school graduation exercises, and we wouldn't want to locate it close to the freeway where nobody could hear the speakers," she said. Other speakers questioned a plan that included space for the ACE train station.

"We already have a train station," said Mike Regal. "Leave it where it is."

Rich Hengehold, who started the Pleasanton Pony baseball league eight years ago, thanked the planners for moving forward with the baseball fields.

"We have 500 kids from Pleasanton playing Pony baseball today with only one field dedicated to Pony," he said. "We can play about 100 a week on a single field, which means we have to scrounge for field space in other cities so that our 400 other members can play ball."

Sean Lemoine, a Foothill High School coach, also called for the new lighted fields to be constructed with Astroturf, which Foothill has done. "We can play on artificial turf in rain or shine. The other day, after a little rain, the new soccer fields at Val Vista Community Park were shut down because the grass was wet."

Several speakers noted that neither the sports complex plans nor the longer-range plan for the rest of Bernal showed new tennis courts.

"I speak for the tennis players and we need lighted courts, too," said Tom Murphy. "Tennis is a sport all of us can play, young or old, and it's unfortunate that it's not on any of the plans for developing the Bernal site."

Rasmussen said Murphy's plea will be considered as he, Fotheringham and city officials continue developing the long-range plans for Bernal in the coming months.

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