Henderson residents fail to pull plug on CCSN’s baseball lights

Jace Radke

Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2000 | 11:06 a.m.

The Henderson City Council has denied an appeal from residents to keep the Community College of Southern Nevada from erecting lights at its Henderson baseball facility.

Residents who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the field near Heather Drive and College Drive, complained at Tuesday night's council meeting that the lights and the noise from night games would intrude on their quiet neighborhoods.

"About a year ago my swimming pool and back yard became the left-field power alley, and we've learned to live with that," said Greg Hornaday, who lives on Glenwood Lane adjacent to the field. "But the lights are going to add night games, and we'll have the light shining into our homes and the noise of the crowds and the public address system at night.

"It may start out with just 10 or 12 night games a season, but then we'll have 20 and it will grow."

The arguments against the lights didn't sway the council from unanimously voting to allow the lights to go up, but residents did convince the council to place some restrictions on the field's special use permit.

The council limited the number of night games that the college could host to no more than 12 next season and set a 10 p.m. limit for those games.

Mayor James Gibson also moved that the field's sound system and speakers face away from homes, and that the lights are shielded so that spill-over lighting does not hit homes. The final stipulation is that the school look into strategies to keep home run balls from making it to neighboring yards.

The use permit will be reviewed in 12 months, allowing for the team's season, that runs from February through April, to be completed and serve as a test run for the lights.

Councilman Steven Kirk said he understood the residents' concerns.

"I don't think 10 or 12 night games over an entire year is that big of an impact, but I can see how residents would fear that over the years that 10 will become 20 and then 30," Kirk said. "The concern is that you can't put the genie back in the bottle."

Gibson added that although the use permit will be back for council review in a year it can come back at anytime if the rules are violated.