Rumble in Rose Park

E.S. Rose Park’s nearly 25-acre spread is not much to look at. When it comes to the park’s rusted chain-link fences, ungroomed outfields and cracked concrete stadium seating, it’s clear that whatever could deteriorate, has. But the residents of Edgehill, a historically black neighborhood that borders the park, want to keep it this way—or at least keep Belmont University from building a multimillion-dollar sportsplex in their backyard. Even so, when the university asked the Metro Board of Parks and Recreation if it could funnel nearly $7 million into the park to build a sports facility worthy of NCAA Division I play last year, the board agreed to explore the idea.

Since then, community groups such as the Organized Neighbors of Edgehill have generated piles of documents outlining their concerns. They’ve held dozens of community meetings—some with Belmont and parks department officials in attendance—to voice their opposition. Most recently, ONE has generated a petition against Belmont’s proposal. So far, more than 325 Edgehill residents have signed it.

As reported here (“Field of Screams,” March 8, 2007), residents have asked the parks board to look past the university’s renderings of the dreamy sports park to see its potential effect on their community—and their quality of life. Better amenities will bring more noise, traffic and parking issues. They fear the latter two could make Edgehill streets less safe for the kids who live there. Plus, the park is couched closely on two sides by both Carter-Lawrence Elementary Magnet and Rose Park Magnet Middle School, so closely in fact that a wayward fly ball could very well end up in the middle school library.

Still, the parks board voted unanimously at its May 1 meeting to approve the university’s lease agreement. In fact, the board members said little at all about the concerns that have been accumulating and festering in the community since early last year. Now the proposal is headed to the Metro Planning Commission. If approved, it will move to the Metro Council.

Few were surprised by the parks board vote. Arlene Lane, an ONE member who addressed the board at the meeting, says the decision—and, more specifically, the way in which it was made—was typical of how community concerns have been tossed aside all along.

Last week, Lane stood before the board, her voice cracking as she made a quickened plea in the three minutes she was allotted. She posed a dozen or so questions: “Has the community been given the opportunity for maximum input...? Does the current agreement address the community’s interests and concerns...?” And she continued on, question after question, asking the board to postpone the vote if they could answer no—or at least were uncertain of the answer—to even one of her concerns.

But all of her questions went unanswered. It was typical, she says. “The parks board continues to block out, to ignore, to render invisible and nonexistent every attempt, both written and oral, that the Organized Neighbors of Edgehill and the Edgehill community have made in the past 17 months,” Lane says.

ONE also submitted a nine-page list of suggested terms for the lease agreement to the board, but Lane says it was also dismissed. She hand-delivered the document to parks department offices two weeks before the meeting. But Lane says Metro’s legal department, which assisted in drawing up the lease, did not receive the term sheet until the morning of the May 1 meeting. By that time, the agreement already was drawn up. “It’s obvious that a conscious decision was made by the parks board to wait until after the final draft had been written up to send [our terms] up to Metro legal,” she says.

Board member James Lawson says the ONE terms “were taken into consideration and calculated” by parks staff. Yet none of the terms was implemented by the board. Lawson described some of ONE’s suggestions as “not practical,” but he did suggest that Metro staff “should look at it.”

And what about the other community claims that weren’t addressed by the board before it took its final vote? Lawson says board members have participated individually “in one way or another” in the entire process. “While it may have appeared as if they were not engaged, they were fully engaged,” he says.

Others aren’t so convinced. When Metro Council member-at-large Carolyn Baldwin Tucker addressed the board, she focused on how Belmont’s plan leaves little room for neighborhood activity in the park. Tucker, who has worked closely with the Edgehill community schools for years, said the development would be devastating to neighborhood children, who use the park for gym class during the school year and extensively for spontaneous use in the summer months. But she also received no response. “I would have hoped that they would have at least said, ‘Let’s talk about it more and come to some common ground,’ ” she says.