The running track in Hanes Park along with tennis courts of the Joe White Tennis Center, Wiley Middle School (left), Bryson Gymnasium (center) and Reynolds High School (right).
A formal entrance with an improved trail is proposed for the northeast corner of Hanes Park at the intersection with West End Boulevard and Reynolda Road.
The eastern most set of hard courts at the Joe White Tennis Center in Hanes Park.
The headline, such as it was, seemed innocuous enough. “School system, city look for solutions on Hanes Park.”
School and city officials — specifically, the paid, professional staff employed in a city-manager-style government as practiced here in Winston-Salem — would be putting heads together in an effort to make Hanes Park safer for the public and Reynolds High student athletes who use it.
The public and Reynolds share the track at Hanes Park
A couple of incidents, one goofy and the other deadly serious, were cited as reasons why professionals ought to look again at how the park is used.
In one, a runner wearing earbuds blithely dashed through a practice in which discus and shotputs were thrown.
The other involved a chase that ended at the park, with police officers shooting an armed man who is alleged to have fired shots at a police substation across town.
Taking steps to keep all park users safe should be simple.
But like everything else involving Hanes Park, nothing is easy or free of temper tantrums.
Long-simmering disputes
Hanes Park, like plenty of other things in our fair city, was given to the citizenry in 1919 by the Hanes family with the understanding that students interested in athletic endeavors would have access to its open green space.
But as the city and the adjacent R.J. Reynolds High School grew, so, too, did conflicts over where and how the park’s 47 acres were to be used.
It’s not difficult to imagine that in the early part of the 20th Century, a small group of teenagers might don flannels or leather helmets a handful of times per year for baseball or football games.
The days when sport — even at the high-school level — would evolve into big business were decades away. The first night baseball game played under electric lights in Cincinnati’s Crosley Field didn’t take place until 1935; Jackie Robinson wouldn’t break the color barrier until 1947, two years after World War II ended.
Winston-Salem had a population of 48,395 in 1920; today we’re roughly at 250,765. The point being, that growth — combined with the fact that no one in the Roaring ‘20s would have imagined that several hundred girls and boys would be playing on some 40 different teams at Reynolds High all needing space.
Conflict over land-use was as inevitable as increasing property values of the big houses in the adjacent West End neighborhood.
The city and the school system worked out in 1999 an agreement (and extended in 2019) in which Reynolds’ would have exclusive use of the track for practices and meets. Nothing has changed about that, which is a good thing.
That would cut down on the chances of some bonehead, rendered deaf by their own ear buds, from being knocked stupid by a discus or shotput.
The underlying problem, though, has nothing to do with adding signs to the track or keeping stay-at-home moms from turning a few laps between 2 and 7 p.m.
Rather, it’s the specter of a lighted, 2,200-seat stadium being built next to Hanes Park that’s twisted panties into wads.
Learning how to share
If you’ve lived here for longer than a minute and a half, you’ll know that debate over building a $4 million stadium on land owned by the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools drives many things concerning venerable Hanes Park.
On one side, we have the gilded class of the West End — some but by no means all residents — concerned about the impacts on their property values. The prospect of noise, four or five Fridays a year at most from football games, offends sensibilities.
(Don’t lump in lacrosse, field hockey or soccer. While those teams would play there as well, a good-sized “crowd” from any of those would fit into a school bus.)
On the other, we have a group of Reynolds boosters and parents who formed in 2012 a nonprofit to raise money to build it.
At the most recent public accounting, in 2018 when the school board voted to support the project, the Home Field Advantage had pledges for perhaps a quarter of the $4 million estimated price tag. Its members also would argue — correctly — that even $1 in private money for construction is $1 more than other schools raised for their publicly funded stadiums.
Backers have argued, too, that forcing Reynolds athletes to carpool (or bus) miles away to practice and game sites unfairly burdens poor kids and prevents some from being able to play.
Earlier this spring, stadium backers totted up and plotted the amounts of city bond money spent on Hanes Park since referenda were passed in 2014 and 2018. Nearly $2.9 million spent on the east side nearer West End and a goose egg on the western edge closer to schools.
Into this comes this recent dust-up — caused by adults — over continued safe access for Reynolds’ teams (and the teens who play on them) to Hanes Park.
Hanes, last I checked, is an active park, which means that it’s filled with ballfields, tennis courts and a track. It’s not a forest of virgin Redwood populated by endangered salamanders or spotted owls.
More conflict is coming, and at its heart is a yet-to-be-built stadium.
“This cannot be about adults,” said Superintendent Tricia McManus. “It has to be about what is good for kids.”
June 29, 2021 at 07:30AM
https://journalnow.com/news/local/nothing-is-easy-when-it-comes-to-using-hanes-park/article_783cf70e-d834-11eb-af21-536acc80c18c.html
Nothing is easy when it comes to using Hanes Park - Winston-Salem Journal
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment