Protective netting planned at Costa Mesa High baseball and softball fields
Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustees approved an agreement Tuesday with an Irvine-based design firm to prepare construction plans for a netting structure around the baseball and softball fields at Costa Mesa High School.
LPA Inc. will develop the project’s design, including netting held up by poles. Details such as the structure’s height and when it would be installed are not yet known.
The structure would prevent foul balls from striking spectators in the bleachers, cars in a nearby parking lot and the school’s recently finished Mustangs Field sports stadium.
After the firm sends construction plans to the Division of the State Architect, the plans will go to the school board for consideration at a public meeting.
Approval of the $53,000 agreement with LPA comes after the district removed 16 poles installed this summer for a planned netting structure at Estancia High School’s baseball field. The poles were meant to hold up nets that would keep foul balls from striking homes on Joann Street and solar panels in a school parking lot.
The poles, implanted outside the first- and third-base lines, were taken out at a cost of $133,800 after Joann Street residents raised concerns in August about the negative effect the structure could have on their property values and backyard views.
In September, Newport-Mesa Supt. Fred Navarro wrote to residents that the district plans to explore other options for blocking foul balls and present them next year.
At Costa Mesa High, the district proposes that netting be added at the softball and baseball fields, which stand side by side.
The fields’ first-base lines run parallel to Mustangs Field, while the third-base side of the softball field borders a campus parking lot.
Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
