Durham Nativity School fulfills a unique and noble purpose: providing Black and Brown boys from families who qualify for the federal lunch program with a tuition-free education.

DNS doesn’t have a gymnasium or a formal recreational facility, so the school is currently developing a soccer field at its Old North Durham location, one of the city’s oldest, predominantly white neighborhoods.

The Durham Board of Adjustment will hold a May 25 public hearing to determine if they will grant the school’s request to allow lights on the artificial turf field. The original plans for the soccer field, which didn’t include lighting or turf, were approved in January 2018.

DNS board member Jim Baker says a lighted soccer field would allow the school’s approximately 60 students to play outside during the winter months while awaiting rides home.

“Between November and mid-March, there’s no place for them to go outside and play,” Baker said. “We think the soccer field would be a safe place for them to play instead of being cooped up inside. It’s a great thing for the community and a great thing for the school. That’s really our intent.”

Construction of the field is not happening without a fight, however. 

Some homeowners in the Old North Durham Neighborhood Association say they supported the school’s original plans for an unlit grass field. But now, some residents are voicing opposition to a proposed turf field with lights mounted on 50-foot poles in the middle of the dense residential neighborhood. 

Neighbor Adam Haile said that residents were notified about the school’s original plans for a soccer field but that “somehow” the project was upgraded without the community being notified.

“Residents weren’t aware of any of that until construction began in the last few weeks, at which point many were upset by the bait-and-switch,” Haile told the INDY in an email.

Haile said some neighbors wonder if the field will be rented out to private leagues rather than solely provide an athletic and recreational outlet for pupils.

Baker told the INDY, however, that “at this time, we have no intention of renting the field to older or adult league members.”

Haile says that school officials told neighbors they plan to spend extra to minimize the impact of lighting on the neighborhood.

“Residents thanked them for that,” Haile wrote, “but there was still skepticism about whether it was enough and why hadn’t residents been included until after plans were made and construction started.”

Meanwhile, Haile says “a few residents” whose homes are adjacent to the property “are very upset” and asking the neighborhood to take up opposition to the project.

Haile pointed to what he says is checkered history of issues between the church and the neighborhood.

“In particular, the school has been renting the site to a church congregation that has been holding very loud, amplified outdoor services every Sunday morning at 8 a.m., including a seven-piece band,” he wrote. “Residents found the church and school unresponsive to their requests to moderate the volume or start at a later time.” Other residents say the church did in fact turn its music down.

In 2017, James Dardig and his wife Susan Johns moved into their home on North Roxboro Street. They can see a sliver of the future soccer field from their porch. They see the school as transformative, but they also point to the neighborhood’s history of conflict with DNS.

“The school has not been super-neighborly with its neighbors,”  Dardig said.

He said that his own experience with the school has been positive, however. Some residents park their cars in the school’s 78-car parking lot. Others played basketball on goals that have since been uprooted for the soccer field construction. The couple’s daughter enjoys riding her scooter on the campus.

Meanwhile, Dardig says DNS has done a good job of prioritizing their neighbors’ concerns about the lit field.

“They’re saying all the right things,” he said.  

Baker said after the original plan was approved by the city’s planning department, school board members thought it would be better to use artificial turf to keep the field green year-round and to include lights for evening soccer.  

After two years and sign-offs from “nine or 10 different departments,” the upgrades were approved by the planning department in February, Baker said. 

The plan stalled last month, however, when city planning officials contacted school board members and told them they could not erect the lighting unless they obtained a special use permit from the city’s board of adjustment, which the board will now consider. 

Baker called the planning department. “They said, ‘We screwed up. We made an error,’” he said.

DNS board members reached out to the neighborhood to participate in several town hall meetings once word of the lighting proposal circulated, Baker said. 

Baker said the lighting plan originally called for the lights to point downward and extend 30 feet in circumference. But after speaking with neighbors, the school decided to use LED lighting that would reduce the circumference to 22 feet.

“What we were trying to tell the neighbors is that this takes a lot of money we don’t have,” Baker said. “We put a lot of thought and effort and more costs to avoid a lighting wash outside the field of play.”

Susan Johns says it’s important for the school and community to strike a balance of trust.

Her husband agrees.

“At the end of the day, none of this is the fault of the 60 kids who need a lighted field with reasonable covenants to make sure the neighborhood is respected,” Dardig said.

Follow Durham Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald on Twitter or send an email to [email protected].

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