Rettler Corporation
Edgewood High School's current athletic field could become a stadium with seating for 1,300 people, lights and a loudspeaker.
For many residents of the Monroe Street neighborhood around Edgewood High School, the glare of Friday night lights and the cacophony of cheers and shouts that accompany them is best left to the TV show and other high schools.
“[A football stadium] just doesn’t fit this neighborhood,” Bob Meyer, a 51-year-old resident who lives across from the high school on Monroe Street, tells Isthmus. “It wouldn’t fit any neighborhood with traffic and proximity.”
But if Edgewood gets the city’s blessing, within years the school could be celebrating the first home football games in its long history with the addition of a stadium.
Edgewood High School’s president Michael Elliott presented the plan Monday evening to about 60 residents who live near school grounds. Building the 1,300-seat stadium, he argues, would give his students a quintessential high school experience — something that neither he, a ’77 graduate, nor his children got to participate in.
Because of historically stiff neighborhood opposition to every aspect of large sporting events — the flood of glaring white light, the boom of loudspeakers and cheering crowds and the endless caravan of exiting vehicles carrying fans home — football games have continued to be played at Middleton High School and most soccer games at Verona’s Reddan Soccer Park.
In addition to the warm feeling of school pride a stadium would surely bring, Elliott said the challenges of playing so many games off-campus is the chief reason Edgewood is pursuing the stadium. Elliott argued students and their parents will be safer if they aren’t required to travel so far for games.
Some sporting events and athletic training happens at the school already. The school’s $1.5 million renovation in 2015 included advanced running surfaces for track and field training as well as cutting-edge artificial turf for outdoor sports, including football, baseball, soccer, track and field, lacrosse and ultimate Frisbee. If approved, the stadium would be built around the current athletic field, including seating for 1,300 people.
Plans for a stadium, which Elliot said could cost anywhere from $1 million to $2 million, weren’t included in the school’s master plan. “Lights [for a stadium] had always been rejected [by the neighborhood] because there wasn’t technology to even offer it as a suggestion,” Elliott told the crowd. “You never would have listened to us.”
Improved LED technology, featuring more focused light, greater height and a more acute angle, means reduced glare, spill and sky glow that Edgewood and its contractor argue would keep the stadium within city code. Elliott estimates only five to seven of the school’s events would require lighting past 9 p.m.
As for sound, Edgewood argues customized seating combined with speakers aimed low and away from residential areas would mitigate drift and volume.
Regarding traffic and parking concerns, Edgewood officials contend audience size won’t exceed current events on campus. The school’s football games at Middleton High usually draw 400 to 700 people, roughly equivalent to basketball games which the school hosts at home. Elliot argues Edgewood’s more than 500 parking spots would be sufficient for any event.
But most of the residents attending Monday’s meeting were unconvinced. They are concerned visitors will end up using street parking instead of campus parking and, despite advanced technology, fear nothing could be done about crowd noise, increased foot traffic and the risk of reduced property values.
“I’m impressed with how you’ve tried to mitigate some of these issues, but I don’t think you can control human nature, the nature of a teenager,” Gail Martinelli said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of spillover. It’s really going to affect the quality of our lives.”
Some also complained of “Edgewood fatigue.”
Paul Guilbault, who has lived in the Monroe neighborhood since 1994, said the stadium proposal, paired with the construction associated with the school’s master plan (which outlined how growth could occur on the college and high school campus), is turning Edgewood into a lousy neighbor.
“As neighbors, you help each other out; it’s give and take,” Guilbault said. “With the master plan that was just finished, Edgewood is taking a lot.”
While the audience response on Monday was largely negative, Ald. Sara Eskrich, who represents the area, said the resident responses she’s gotten via email are more varied. She says many in her district — some of which are Edgewood alumni — support the sporting events for the entertainment value they would bring.
Either way, the path to approval for the project is a long one. More neighborhood meetings are being planned, and Edgewood has yet to submit an amendment for the stadium to its master plan that would have to be approved by the city’s Plan Commission and Common Council, with community input included in each step.
