Preserve Newport Fields Urges RA Board to Reject the Lake Newport Soccer Project

My home is only about 50 feet from the Lake Newport Soccer Fields. While I'm President of the Bayfield Station Homeowners Association, I'm also a member of Preserve Newport Fields, a coalition of Reston residents opposed to the Reston Soccer Association, Inc. proposal and the destruction of the natural grass surface and open green space at the Lake Newport Soccer Fields.

According to tonight’s agenda, the RA Board will vote "to reconsider" how the Lake Newport Soccer project "is to be handled going forward." In the view of our coalition, there’s only one choice: the proposal should be rejected outright and Reston Soccer should search for a more appropriate site to host their facility.

Neighbors from the most affected clusters are united in our opposition to Reston Soccer’s proposal and are angered at the manner in which the Reston Association has mismanaged this project. In our view, the proposal violates RA covenants concerning the conservation of green space, and we believe it amounts to a taking of a shared community resource for the private gain of Reston Soccer.

For almost a year, Reston Soccer, with RA’s assistance, has been promoting this project, holding fundraisers, securing corporate and political sponsors and writing articles online via multiple news outlets without including or consulting with the communities most affected by the proposed changes to the fields in our neighborhoods or anyone in North Reston

The letter announcing the first community meeting about this project came with only four days notice. Many homes received no letter at all. The immediate reaction in the neighborhoods surrounding the Lake Newport Fields was one of shock and anger.

Our community feels like it's been ambushed. Tempers are running high, and things have changed a lot since I spoke at an RA Board Operations Committee meeting on February 6th and asked the members to delay the first community meeting on February 8th, a request that was denied. Over this past weekend, residents in three clusters adjacent to the field voted to publicly oppose the project. On Monday, many of them used their day off from work to go door to door in North Point to ask their neighbors to join them in their opposition.

I know that our members would be grateful if the RA Board did the right thing and ended this fight tonight by officially rejecting the proposal in a roll call vote.