Suit challenges Radnor's lease of park for athletic field

A Radnor group has filed suit challenging a lease that lets the Agnes Irwin School cover a grassy oval at a township park with artificial turf and then restrict public access at certain times.

Radnor commissioners voted, 4-1, last month to lease Radnor Memorial Park for 15 years to Agnes Irwin. Rent was set at $35,000 a year.

The school plans to use the park as its principal athletic field, installing $1 million worth of improvements such as grandstands, scoreboard, turf, and field lighting, said Township Solicitor John B. Rice. It will also pay for yearly maintenance.

The school said the move was needed because it plans to build a new athletics center, new student life center, and redesigned lobby at its Bryn Mawr campus next spring. The project will cut space on campus for playing fields, said school spokeswoman Wanda Motley Odom.

"We have been looking for opportunities to expand field options," she said by e-mail.

The suit, filed July 15 in Delaware County Court, claims that both the ordinance and lease are illegal and in defiance of conditions under which some of the land was given for use as a park in 1993. The donor was Morgan's Run Corp., a subsidiary of Sunoco. The rest came from the Radnor School District.

"The donation . . . was limited to use in perpetuity as 'public parklands or public open space,' " the complaint says. "Further, no artificial structure could be built or placed in this area of parkland."

It also claims that private use of public parkland runs contrary to township zoning.

Agnes Irwin, in a statement released Thursday, did not address those issues. Instead, it called the lease "a great example of an effective public-private partnership that truly serves the interests of both parties" as well as others who might use the improved field.

"It is our hope that Radnor residents will see this partnership as beneficial to all," the statement read.

The suit asks the court to invalidate both the lease and enabling ordinance, and to block the defendants from enacting the lease, which is to start next spring.

The civil action was lodged by Citizens to Keep Radnor Parks Public, whose members named in the complaint were Al Murphy, Heather Murphy, David Humphrey, Gayla McClusky, and Thomas Ralph. In all, the group has about 15 members, Al Murphy said.

The group's attorneys are Fronefield Crawford Jr., a former Radnor solicitor, and Clinton A. Stuntebeck, a former president of the Board of Commissioners and former zoning board solicitor.

Defendants include Agnes Irwin, the township, and its board of commissioners. The suit singles out the commissioners who voted in favor of the lease: Hank Mahoney, Bill Spingler, Don Curley, and John Nagle.

Nagle said Thursday: "I will certainly say that I am disappointed."

Stuntebeck said he understood the school's need to create athletic fields off campus.

"Like a lot of other private schools, they've run out of space," Stuntebeck said. But he said that should not make Radnor deviate from its trust to hold donated lands under the original conditions - in this case as parkland or open space.

"There really can be no exceptions," he said.

Rice disagreed. "This public-private type partnership is not something unusual, unless it's changing the use, and it's my view it doesn't violate anything that plaintiffs claim it violates," he said.

Furthermore, Rice said, "look at the cost benefit here. One million dollars worth of improvements; that's not something the township could do on its own."

Under the lease, the public is excluded from the playing field during the school year from Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m., and some evenings from 6 to 9 when there are games.

The school would have exclusive daytime use for three weeks in August, and for six other weeks in summer for sports camps. The public walking trail would remain open at all times.