Altadena Residents ‘Grateful’ Polyfield Plans Scrapped

A launch party to unveil a billboard opposing a sports complex in the mountains of Altadena became a victory celebration on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, a local prep school scrapped plans for a multi-million dollar sports complex at the site of a nursery in Altadena.

In a statement on Tuesday, officials at Pasadena Poly said it would not move forward with the project due to the “high level of financial investment.”

“Regardless of the reasons cited by the school [Polytechnic] for its decision, we are grateful their leadership came to the same conclusion as thousands of Altadena and Pasadena residents: the Chaney Trail site is simply inappropriate for the development of an athletics campus in a high fire zone,” said Michael Bicay, of AltadenaWild, the local nonprofit that opposed the project.

Prior to the announcement of the cancellation of the project, the group announced it would host a launch party for a new billboard on Lake Avenue, that reads “Keep Altadena Wild” and “Help Protect Our Foothills.”

The launch party became a celebration party.

“Polyfields” would have been on the Nuccio’s Nurseries property off Chaney Trail in Altadena.

The Nuccio family agreed to sell the 80-acre property, including the 13-acre nursery site, to the Pasadena-based independent school.

Pasadena Poly is nearly 10 miles away from Chaney Trail.

“I hope we as a community can work with the Nuccio family to find owners who will be a benefit to Altadena,” said Steve Lamb.

Altadena residents expressed concerns over the project, and AltadenaWild collected thousands of signatures from Altadena residents opposing the project.

“We oppose plans announced by Polytechnic School in Pasadena to build a sports complex on Chaney Trail in the northern Altadena foothills,” according to the petition posted on AltadenaWild’s website. “The proposed development site is adjacent to the Angeles National Forest and located within a State-designated very high fire hazard severity zone.”

“The plans to build new athletic facilities and the many hundreds of additional visitors crowding an already narrow and hilly access road will dramatically increase the risks to public safety. If approved, the sports complex will fundamentally change the semi-rural characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood, with impacts propagating throughout the Altadena foothills and the Angeles National Forest.”

Last month, an official with the County’s Department of Regional Planning gave a presentation on the review process that would have been used to analyze the plans at the Altadena Community Center to a standing-room-only crowd and hundreds of people watching virtually.

A day earlier, 50 people protested the sports complex outside of Pasadena Poly.

Pasadena Poly filed an application in May with the County for a new athletic and outdoor education facility, Polyfields, on the Nuccio’s Nurseries property off Chaney Trail in Altadena.

However, the Department of Regional Planning later asked that a “second means of legal access” to the site be identified and that “all appropriate grading calculations” be updated to reflect the second access route.

The Department of Regional Planning also requested that Poly identify a “haul route for off-site transport of excess material,” according to the Altadena Wild website.

The school had until Oct. 17 to comply with the requests.

Poly’s application called for the permanent conservation of approximately 67 acres of the site off Chaney Trail, and the process would have included an Environmental Impact Report and detailed studies of Poly’s proposal, as well as opportunities for public review, comment, and participation.

“In May, following our official project application to the County of Los Angeles for the PolyFields project in Altadena, we kicked off a new phase of intensive study of the site’s environmental conditions,” the school’s statement said. “This study brought new information to light. Ultimately, the site proved to be too complex. Infrastructure, engineering, and grading requirements drove the development costs to levels that were much higher than anticipated, and far beyond what we believe to be reasonable.”