Open Letter to Davidson County Commissioners by David Garvin

Opinion

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Dear Commissioners,

I would like to respond to just a few of the many, many comments that were expressed during the meeting on June 23, 2025 concerning the Southmont Sports Complex.

Please stop calling it a community center. It's not one. You know it, I know it, and so does everyone else. Community centers don't try to sell naming rights. They are there first for the community and second for others. I can call my house a storage shed with utilities but I'm still going be required to pay residential taxes because nobody is going to believe otherwise. This facility will be a sports megaplex.

One comment that was particularly disappointing was the comment that “For five days out of the week, there will not be any traffic.” Well, right now, there are 7 days of normal traffic. That's like telling me you're going to cut off my right leg and then coming back and saying “don't worry, we're only requiring a few toes.” I prefer to keep everything that I already have, thank you.

We were told that we could use the the facilities whenever they weren't previously reserved by traveling teams. Since the main purpose of this facility is to be used by traveling teams, that means that local teams, kids, and residents are the second choice. Even the “Walking Trail” was something to attract cross country running competitions, not specifically for the benefit of local residents. This facility is targeted to bring people from outside Davidson County to Southmont. No matter who it is, and no matter how well behaved, they do not have the personal investment in caring for the area. One of the good news items at the June 23 meeting was how much trash was picked up on the side of the road by volunteers. While I can appreciate and am grateful of their efforts, I didn't look at this news as good. It just made me feel sad that people just toss so much trash on the side of the road and not give it another thought. The traffic coming in will have a large number of people who are only here to party if their team wins. They will bring lots of drinks and food in containers and wrappers, a percentage of which will end up in my landscaping. To further demonstrate this point, even though there are ample trash receptacles on Wildlife Recreation Access Road Boat ramp, the road is still littered with beer cans, plastic bottles and Dominoes boxes after one of the fishing derbies.

One comment from previous meetings was “We could just sell the land to developers.” I'm going to ignore the threatening tone and just state that houses would be preferable. While I wouldn't exactly want another 600 houses in our backyard, at least homeowners usually are invested in and care about their neighborhood. They don't throw trash out their front door onto the lawn, they mow and care for their yards, and they provide a tax base for the for the county. Also, they won't all leave their houses within an hour of each other and clog up the roads as much as fans leaving a high school game.

The noise and lighting for these fields will be significant. The height of the lighting towers mean that the abutting properties will be illuminated every summer weekend. I used to live about 1 mile from a school that had two baseball fields. The sound that an aluminum baseball bat makes goes a startlingly long way and we could still see the lights better than the stars.

Next is a comment made by one of the speakers. While making some good points as a proponent for the project, he stated that kids in Davidson County need sports and outdoor activities to keep them out of trouble. My response is that they need education and good parenting more. A very small percentage of kids will be offered scholarships to play sports in college but every single one of them needs an education in a safe, engaging, and intellectually challenging environment in order to be a productive adult. After school programs including sports are wonderful but the main point of schooling is to prepare them for the future and gainful employment. $65,000,000 added to the school budget and properly applied for special programming, after school activities (including sports), and reduced class sizes would go a long way toward helping them achieve that. If you go to Zillow.com, select a house for sale in Lexington, and read about the schools, the national ratings are abysmal. For example West Davidson High is rated a 3 out of 10 on a national scale and the elementary school I found is a 5. Thomasville High School is a 1. Trying to convince me that a sportsplex will help fix that is a tough sell.

If none of these comments matter and we are still insisting on building this, I have a suggestion: I combed through the Davidson County GIS records and found about 130 acres of land in different semi-contiguous parcels owned by Davidson County that are in front of Egger Wood Products on Belmont Road. Since it was stated that you are only going to develop about 110 acres in Southmont (less actually, because of existing structures, watershed, and overestimating the parking) This might be enough to move some or all of the facility. You don't need to have every possible thing in the same place. Baseball fields, soccer fields, or some of the other amenities could be built on this alternate site and still associated with the county. Definitely the water park could be put there. This site is right next to Rte 85 so there would much less traffic impact on the roads and emotional outbursts in the meetings. You don't need to build an Olympic-sized facility on a tiny 2-lane residential road.

Please consider these comments.

Thank you,

David Garvin