Park Authority hosting meeting on adding lights to Clermont Park

The Fairfax Park Authority has begun work on revising the master plan for Clermont Park on Franconia Road, and is hosting a public information meeting on the process this Thursday.

The 7 p.m. meeting is at the Franconia Governmental Center at 6121 Franconia Road (see map).

The 40-acre park currently consists of four baseball fields, as well as trails and a large forested area. As part of the draft master plan for the park, the Park Authority is looking into adding lights to two of the ballfields, as well as in the parking lot. No other major changes are being proposed.

The Park Authority began looking into adding lights to the park last year after receiving a query from Pioneer Youth Baseball, which plays its games there. A community meeting on the park was held in September 2018, and the Park Authority and Pioneer met with residents from the neighboring Loft Ridge community in October 2018.

According to documents from the the Park Authority Board’s May 8 meeting, the Park Authority and Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay’s office received favorable feedback about adding lights at Clermont during the community meetings, and began looking into the issue more in-depth.

“Community athletic groups have expressed a need for additional playing time on the diamond field facilities and proposed lighting the ninety-foot diamond and one of the sixty-foot diamonds as well as the parking area,” Park Authority board documents from a May meeting said. “Given the scarcity of land available to construct new athletic facilities in the district, the most effective way to increase playing time is by lighting some of the existing diamond fields at Clermont Park to extend hours of use.”

In order to add lights, however, the park needs to go through the county’s formal master planning process. That’s due in part to the park’s somewhat convoluted history, which includes a deed restriction dating back to 2000, when a community task force and Park Authority agreed to forbid the use of lights, permanent loudspeakers and concession stand facilities as part of the addition of new fields to the park. The property back then was still owned by the Board of Supervisors — originally the Clermont Park site was envisioned as a future school property before becoming an “interim park” owned by the county board — and the deed restriction stayed in place when the property was transferred to the Park Authority in 2007.

Therefore the Board of Supervisors will need to hold a public hearing and then vote on removing the deed restrictions, according to Park Authority documents. If the Board of Supervisors votes to remove the restrictions, the Park Authority Board will need to then give a final sign off on the master plan amendment.

Members of the public will be able to comment on the draft master plan for 30 days after Thursday’s meeting.