Reaction to Local School's Impact Draws Citizens to Web Site

Baltimore Lutheran School in Towson, is in the midst of a huge expansion. Community residents are weary of dealing with the traffic, public safety, and zoning issues that this expansion is causing.

Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) June 4, 2006 -- Towson-area homeowners, frustrated by a number of on-going issues with the campus of the Baltimore Lutheran School now have a web site to keep their community informed.

The school, one of two campuses of Baltimore Lutheran, is set within a residential area on Concordia Drive. Since it’s establishment in the mid 1960’s, it has outgrown its own facilities and has embarked on an expansion campaign, including planned construction of a $5.1 million-dollar Worship and Fine Arts Center and further renovations.

The school’s 100,000 square foot synthetic grass field as well as its other athletic field and gymnasium are offered for rental use to other organizations, which creates a number of unique problems for residents near the school when visitors come to the already-crowded campus.

The web site sheds some light on why so many area residents don’t see the school as a good neighbor.

For many residents, the final straw was the erection of a permanent “tent” structure covering the tennis courts.

“It’s an eyesore,” one homeowner said. “And we don’t know yet if they even got a permit to put it there.”

The opportunity for the school to possibly rent the newly-covered space out for events only adds to the residents’ concerns. The prospect of having even more visitors coming into and through the neighborhood is alarming to residents.

The heart of the problem is traffic and parking, which the school exerts no control over, especially when their facilities are used by others. Oddly enough, schools are exempted from the kinds of regulations that require adequate parking spaces or limit the impact of traffic. The visitors who come to the school property often wind up on the neighborhood streets and any space of land they can get on, sometimes blocking private driveways or parking illegally.

Combined with that kind of annoyance, the seemingly never-ending construction and resulting debris in the campus areas as well as the lack of adequate trash collection from the athletic fields has a number of residents concerned about the impact on their property values.

The Chatterleigh Association, who is not affiliated with the web site, has scheduled a meeting on June 6th, at 7:00 p.m. at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church, located at 1108 Providence Road, where Councilman Bryan McIntire will have an opportunity to hear the homeowner’s concerns.

“The fact that we don’t have these kinds of problems with the other schools in the area tells you something,” one homeowner noted. “You don’t have this going on if the school cares about their impact on the community.”

For more information, visit: http://www.baltimorelutheraninfo.org

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