Turf fight over Minnehaha Academy athletic field plan sours neighborhood relations

Plans for a new athletic field at Minnehaha Academy has pitted the private religious school against neighbors worried about bigger lights and late-night disruption.

Minnehaha Academy wants to replace its grass athletic field with synthetic turf to better withstand heavy use and surround it with four 70- and 80-feet floodlights to accommodate night games. Immediate neighbors are alarmed, saying the school's evening events have brought unaddressed noise, trash, reckless driving and congestion, and reinforcing the facilities to allow for more third-party rentals will exacerbate those problems.

Minnehaha athletic director Josh Thurow said the school wants to transition to more turf because the higher-maintenance grass playing field is prone to getting waterlogged. Most Minnesota colleges' sports fields are turf, so having continuity of playing surfaces would also better serve Minnehaha's athletes.

"This year for homecoming, we had a huge thunderstorm the night before and my ground staff said ... we need to cancel it," Thurow said. "A lot of times as athletic director, I'm saying, 'No, no, no, you can't be on it, we can only practice on this half today because the field is getting run down.' With a turf field, we can have five classes ... come up and play on it. It really broadens our opportunities for our kids."

Minnehaha's high school campus at 3100 S. West River Parkway is bounded by neighbors worried about the school's plans to rent out its new field to outside organizations for night activities.

"The current use of the field already creates a significant nuisance to the surrounding neighborhood. ... Extending athletic activities after dark and allowing unchecked use by third party organizations would only serve to greatly expand the negative impact to the resident neighbors," Cooper neighborhood residents wrote in a letter to the city Planning Commission.

Minnehaha Academy held community meetings in March and April after residents asked for them. Amid mounting concerns the school wasn't willing to change any part of its application for variances, the school asked to postpone its public hearing before the Planning Commission from May 20 to Monday in order to conduct additional community engagement. It held a third community meeting Wednesday night.

"We have been open and available to discuss this matter further with Minnehaha Academy, but not once have you or any other Academy representative tried to engage with us in that time," neighbor Andrew Schmidt wrote in an open letter to the school. "Instead, after hearing our input and objections, Minnehaha Academy simply submitted its application with no recognition of our concerns."

Light and noise

Minnehaha President Donna Harris declined interview requests. At Wednesday's meeting she told a room of neighbors, student parents and staff the school created a email address for neighbor inquiries.

Addressing concerns that the light poles Minnehaha wanted to install were twice the height allowed by ordinance, architect Mike Berg explained that because the field is so large, lights on shorter poles of 35 feet would have to be angled more horizontally to illuminate it, thus flooding light onto neighboring properties. The school asked for 70- and 80-foot poles so the lights could be angled down and better contained to the field.

School officials said Minnehaha would rent the new field to outside organizations an additional 30 days each year for $150 an hour. Minnehaha Academy Board Chair Marc Belton assured neighbors it was not intended to be a revenue generator, but a community asset in a city with more demand than supply for premier athletic fields.

Neighbor Becca Fink said she appreciated knowing the school's initial plans, but feared rentals would escalate once the field was built and neighbors had no more say. "A lot of the local soccer players, they go to the parks that are extremely inexpensive or free," she said. "So I don't see how this field will be serving our community."

The Minneapolis Park Board rents regular fields to outside youth clubs for $10 an hour, and premier fields for $70 an hour.

However, when scheduling, the Park Board prioritizes its own rec leagues, followed by Minneapolis Public Schools requests, and then outside clubs.

"It would be great just to have another option," said Minnehaha parent Jessica Hamburge, who supports the school's proposal and believes staff are genuinely trying to keep the student body and visitors mindful of the neighbors. "Of course turf's horrible, but any child that's playing high school, anything competitive, you're going to be on turf."

Synthetic concerns?

Minnehaha Academy's application claims synthetic turf is a safer playing surface than grass, and will have positive environmental effects because it does not require watering, fertilizing or power mowing. Some neighbors respond the school should be more concerned about a new law that names synthetic turf as a product that commonly includes PFAS, a class of "forever chemicals" that don't break down with time and are toxic at extremely low levels, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Emerging research has linked PFAS with increased risk of cancer.

Starting in 2025, the new state law will bans the sale of products that intentionally add PFAS, including turf.

At Wednesday's meeting Trevor Gruys, a civil engineer working with Minnehaha Academy, told attendees that he had found numerous studies stating turf fields have no significant impact on human and environmental health. "The field turf product that we have selected, it meets the criteria of [the new law]," he said. "That's about as simple as we can say that."

Minnehaha Academy has selected a crumb rubber product called "Vertex Dual Fiber" made by FieldTurf, said Thurow.

School staff said FieldTurf has assured them that it complies with state statute. Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Adam Olson said while synthetic turf manufacturers are increasingly advertising PFAS-free products, the agency has not independently tested those claims.

Minneapolis City Council Member Aurin Chowdhury, who sits on the Planning Commission and represents the ward where Minnehaha Academy is located, said she will rely on what she hears at Monday's public hearing to inform her vote.

"What I hope can happen, is just to open channels of communication necessary to be good neighbors to one another," she said.