The district-owned fields to the north of the Yellow Springs High and McKinney Middle schools — known as the Morgan Fields — are the home turf to around a dozen local, club and school soccer teams. Presently, the land is eyed as a potential site for a proposed 50-unit low-income housing development. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
The value of a soccer field
- Published: July 11, 2024
While much of the world’s gaze is fixed on the ongoing European Football Championship, local eyes are locked on a soccer field closer to home: the Morgan Fields.
Spanning over three acres just north of the Yellow Springs middle and high schools, the district-owned soccer fields are the home turf to a handful of recreational, school, adult and youth soccer leagues. But one day, the Morgan Fields may be the site of a major housing development.
Since last fall, local groups — including some elected bodies as well as a citizen-led coalition — have held numerous discussions regarding the pursuit of millions of dollars in housing tax credits to subsidize the construction of a possible 50-unit rental complex for low-income families.
If, in the coming months, all the local stakeholders agree that the Morgan Fields are, in fact, the best site to build the future housing development, then where would all the soccer players go? Is the district willing to part with the fields, and if so, for how much money? Does low-income housing in Yellow Springs come at the expense of athletics?
As the News found in several interviews last week, these questions have weighed heavily on the minds of several local soccer coaches — questions that village leaders are still working to answer.
Background, next steps?
Local affordable housing nonprofit YS Home, Inc. has led the charge on this low-income housing project since last fall, when the group first unveiled the opportunity at a Village Council meeting. At the time, Home, Inc. Executive Director Emily Seibel asked Council members to consider siting the development on the Village-owned Center for Business and Education, or CBE.
As Seibel noted then, the CBE scored highly on the Ohio Housing Finance Agency’s opportunity index, and as such, has a competitive chance at receiving $15 million in available subsidies to construct the low-income housing development, estimated to cost around $20 million.
However, the CBE is subject to restrictive covenants that prohibit housing. It’s the site of marijuana producer Cresco Labs and Antioch University Midwest — both of which would have to agree with the Village to amend those covenants to allow for a housing provision. Owing to those land restrictions, Council members generally agreed at the time that the CBE wasn’t a tenable option.
Since then, the CBE has resurfaced as a potential site for the low-income housing project. Most recently, Village Council co-signed a formal letter sent to Antioch University and Cresco leadership to see if they are amenable to modifying the covenants.
Additionally, earlier this year, the Morgan Fields entered the local discourse as a second potential option. Like the CBE, it also scored highly on the opportunity index, and as a result, is primed to receive the federal subsidies.
Seibel brought the matter to an April school board meeting, when board members voted 3–2 on two resolutions that approved both “the exploration of the request from Home, Inc. to sell three acres of school district property for a 50-unit affordable family housing project” as well as “the exploration of land relative to [that] request from Home, Inc. to buy three acres of school district property.”
Still, an eventual sale of the fields would first require a number of preliminary steps.
For one, the district, in 2020, placed a collateral lien on the land against the schools’ track and athletic stadium improvements project. For a sale to occur, the lien would have to be removed. At the June 17 Village Council meeting, Council members approved a resolution to take $7,500 from the Village’s Affordable Housing Fund to pay for a bond attorney to determine if the Morgan Fields are even an option due to that collateral lien.
Furthermore, the school land may have to be rezoned from R-A, or low-density residential, to either a planned unit development or R-C, high-density residential, in order to accommodate a 50-unit housing development on the three acres. This would require work on the Village Planning Commission’s part.
Also, as Seibel told the News in an email earlier this week, a lead developer — working in tandem with Home, Inc. — would have to be involved to finalize an offer price for the soccer fields.
“My understanding,” Seibel wrote, “is that the project could absorb $75,000 per acre. Perhaps more.”
On the sale process, Seibel said that the Village would enter into a purchase option “contingent on securing tax credits directly with [the district]” and that a “lead developer would need to be involved in setting up an agreement, as they would be a party to whatever is decided upon.”
“The land would be paid for through the project, out of tax credit funding if awarded,” Seibel said.
Seibel added that Home, Inc. is waiting to seek out a co-developer until the collateral lien matter is resolved, the land gets rezoned and the political will points to a future sale.
“That said, we will continue to answer questions, provide support and walk alongside the public entities exploring this rare opportunity to pursue family rental housing, including an alternate location for the soccer fields,” Seibel said.
As of press time, no alternate location has been publicly proposed.
Coaches sound off
“Our biggest concern is having a safe, accessible playing field for our young people,” Yellow Springs High School girls varsity head coach Sarah Wallis told the News last week.
“You can’t just place goals on a piece of grass and call it a soccer field,” she added.
Wallis, who has coached in Yellow Springs on and off for the last 25 years, grew up playing soccer in the village — often at the Morgan Fields. Despite her lifelong presence on those acres abutting Dayton-Yellow Springs Road, she said that her attachment to the fields doesn’t stem from nostalgia or sentimentalism.
“No — it’s the monetary investment that’s been put into that land to make it a safe environment for soccer, cross-country practices, physical education classes, recesses, pick-up games and more,” Wallis said. “It’s a community asset for hundreds of people.”
She noted that local nonprofit Yellow Springs Soccer Inc., or YSSI, has since 2007 funneled over $136,000 into maintaining and improving the Morgan Fields — that includes buying new soccer equipment, replacing nets, leveling the ground and painting the field.
On top of that, Wallis said, are the innumerable hours of volunteer labor she, other coaches and community members have poured into the fields.
One such volunteer and coach is Jason Bailey, who presently heads the Greene County Cosmos and has worked closely with FC Springs for years — both of which are competitive youth soccer teams, among nearly a dozen, that use the Morgan Fields.
Bailey told the News he mows the grassy fields — a two-hour task — regularly.
“The fields need to be tight,” he said. “When the grass gets too long, you just can’t play. With kids 5- or 6-years-old learning how to play, learning how to use the inside or outside of their foot, long grass won’t allow them to succeed.”
Owing to the volume of young and old players who call the Morgan Fields home, that’s a lot of success Bailey and others steward. According to data Bailey provided the News, over 200 individuals use the four soccer fields on any given weekend throughout the year — that includes kids, parents, coaches and others.
“And that’s a conservative estimate,” Bailey noted. “That’s not counting brothers and sisters running around, or other family members who show up to watch the kids play. On some Saturday mornings, there could be over 300 people out there.”
Like Wallis, Bailey said he’s amenable to relocating the soccer fields if the resources and support are made available by the elected political bodies, but he’s skeptical of the feasibility. For him, it’s a matter of geometry and capacity.
“Where in the village is there enough space for a full, 11-versus-11 field? What about all the parking? Where could this be convenient for students and parents?” Bailey asked.
Without answers to these questions, Bailey said he’d be more supportive of sustained villagewide dialogue — one in which he and other coaches work with local leaders to imagine more tenable locations to replace the Morgan Fields, should they be acquisitioned for housing.
Wallis echoed this sentiment.
“This is a really complex and complicated situation,” she said. “We should think of more creative options. I’m all for diversity in economics and population, but there are already so many amazing minds in this community — so why can’t we think about doing something differently?”
In another interview with the News, YSSI Director Art Boulet wondered aloud — somewhat optimistically — what that would look like.
“I don’t view this as a zero-sum game,” Boulet said. “There ought to be a context in which we get this low-income housing development and a new area for our kids to have a sports program that’s just as good if not better than the one we have now.”
He continued: “I want to be an advocate for Home, Inc. and what’s happening — not something that’s going to come at the expense of the sports programs, but because I ultimately think a new housing project would be a boon to local athletics. Not only could we get a shiny new field, but we could also get an additional 50 families in town. That means more players in sports, in the schools.”
Although the three coaches differed somewhat in their faith in local leaders’ ability to secure suitable replacement land in Yellow Springs, they shared a common desire: better communication from local decision-makers. All three felt they and the other local coaches could have offered valuable perspectives at the outset of the Morgan Fields conversations. Now, they feel they’re struggling to keep up with shifting landscape of the communitywide discourse.
“When you’re on a team, communication is key,” Boulet said. “Coaches have to talk to their players, and players have to talk to one another. That’s the ideal we’re shooting for here. I think this is a great idea and a great plan, but we need even better communication.”
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