Now that the Planning Commission has issued its strong rejection of the Moraga Canyon Sports Fields project, you don’t have to take our word that this project is a terrible idea. Listen to the many, many reasons cited by the Planning Commissioners themselves in the video below. It’s been edited for brevity, but nothing is taken out of context—you can see the full original video under the “Planning Commission” link on the City of Piedmont video page. If you don’t have time to watch the video, we’ve included a few quotes below it (click the “Click to read more” link).

Clark Thiel, Commissioner:

• “If this were a house that was before is, there’s no redeeming quality about it that would even come close to being approvable.”
• “The proponents have said it themselves: this is too big for the site.“

Melanie Robertson, Planning Commission Chair (and an architect and engineer):

• “Drivers leaving the parking lots…would have to floor it and pray…It’s a recipe for disaster.“
• “When leaving the park, you just have to trust to luck that no one’s coming up or down to hit the car. That’s not me making it up; that’s what the EIR has said…there’s no mitigation.”
• “Those to me are tremendous dangers and liabilities.”
• “If the curb and gutter is realigned, making Moraga even narrow than it already is, there will be head-on collisions.”
• “In Moraga Canyon…the grounds are beautiful, but the traffic, it’s like being on a freeway. …It’s not a calm city road as it’s been portrayed on some of the renderings.”
• “In the revised plan, I see great danger to children playing on the “glade”, because that’s not a fenced-in area…you’ll be chasing balls right out into traffic. That made my heart stop when I saw that, it was so terrifying.”
• “If the City Council goes forward with this, they would actually have to sign a statement…saying that it’s aware of the unsafe conditions [but] the construction of the playing field is more important. I don’t think that would be a good thing…for the City of Piedmont to do.”
• “It’s a tremendous liability, and the EIR which was certified…says you can’t mitigate that.”
• “This is a huge, 320-foot [retaining] wall…some of the piers are drilled down 57 feet into the slope…with tiebacks drilled 50 feet horizontally into the slope. This is a huge, huge job–it isn’t just throwing up a retaining wall.”
• “I’ve actually been looking to look at a wall of this size, and aside from the side of a freeway I haven’t found one.”
• “The site is 2700 feet away from the Hayward Fault….Putting a retaining wall in makes the slope, in my opinion, seismically weaker than it is in its natural state.”
• “It’s a huge deal to realign all those sewer lines [from uphill properties]…It’s like another undergrounding district.”
• “The property damage potential from the construction is tremendous.”
• “[Homeowners] might see wall cracks, cracks in their foundations…Every one of those is a potential lawsuit.”
• “[On the berm along Moraga Avenue] Mechanically stabilized earth is not a pretty sight. … The best you can hope for is weeds growing on it. I think it’s misleading on the renderings, because it’s not going to be a beautifully landscaped slope.”