The developers of Chatham Park have contacted Chatham County Schools with a proposal to build a multi-use sports facility on the Northwood High School campus. The facility, which will consist of a soccer complex and Miracle Field, has been proposed to be built on the front portion of the Northwood High School campus, located between Northwood High School Road and Charger Boulevard; it covers the area from U.S 15-501 to the stream that runs beside Northwood’s current soccer field.
Chris Blice, Assistant Superintendent for Operations for Chatham County Schools, proposed this plan at the Chatham County Board of Education meeting on May 9. This joint-use agreement between Chatham County Schools, Chatham Park, The Miracle League, and Chatham County Parks and Recreation will address the facility’s construction, use and maintenance.
“Our goal as a school system would always be, for us…to get the most benefit from [the proposal] as possible,” Blice told The Omniscient.
Despite its benefit to Northwood, some are discouraged by the environmental setback that this plan would impose. Stephanie Cifers, a science teacher at Northwood, conducted experiments with her AP Environmental Science classes to determine the biodiversity of the area that the proposal would affect.
“[My classes] went outside and conducted a bioblitz that essentially identified all of the different species in a selected patch of the forest, whether it be trees, plants or shrubs,” Cifers said. “When we came back inside, we took a count of each of the species that we identified and plugged them into a biodiversity index.”
The biodiversity index typically runs between 1.5 and 3.5 in biodiverse areas, with 1.5 being less diverse and 3.5 being more diverse. The patches of Northwood’s forests that were surveyed came out to be an average of 3.01.
“Between [my classes], we identified over 30 different types of species in just a little patch of the forest,” Cifers said. “Hopefully, that will show that we need to preserve places like this because we normally don’t see such high levels of biodiversity, especially on campus. If we’re replacing [this area] with a soccer field, the biodiversity will drop close to 0 because [the forest] is presumably being replaced with just one type of grass and paved surfaces.”
Blice says that many of these environmental issues and other concerns will be addressed, especially those concerning Northwood’s cross country trail that runs through the area where the soccer fields would be built.
“Yeah, we’re probably going to have to take down some trees,” Blice said. “But, we’ll plant more wherever we can and we’ll do it in a responsible, meet all-the-standards way. Whatever we do, we’re going to do it the right way.”
