Adams Twp. sports park owner appeals revocation of lighting permit
The management of Valencia Sports Park has filed an appeal in Butler County Common Pleas Court against the Adams Township Zoning Hearing Board after it revoked a permit for lights that the park had recently installed at its golf driving range.
The lights would have allowed the park to keep golf activity open after dark and maximize its revenue, the park’s owner, Paul Adametz, said.
The park received a permit in November 2022 and the lights, which cost about $140,000, were installed in the summer, but Adams Township has argued the permit was issued in error.
Adametz received a cease-and-desist order from the township Aug. 25, two months after the light fixtures were finished and put into use.
According to the documents filed with the appeal, Adams Township code enforcement officer Mike Knox said the initial issuing of the permit was a “mistake,” and the sports park’s request for lighting was made in “bad faith.”
Mike Gallagher, solicitor for Adams Township, contends that Adametz knew he needed to submit a land development plan before getting permission to install lights at the driving range, and that the issuing of the permit in November 2022 was a clerical error on the township’s end.
“The position of the township is … the driving range was told, ‘If you’re going to put lights in, you have to come back to the planning commission for approval,’” Gallagher said. “And they didn’t do that. They just went for a building permit to be issued, and the building permit was issued by mistake.”
Adametz brought his case before Adams Township’s zoning hearing board Nov. 8, but his appeal was denied in December, after weeks of deliberation by the board.
The appeal contends that the township violated due process and disregarded the testimony of the park’s expert witness on lighting measurements, among other grievances.
“It's important to us that we resolve this issue and have the lights back on by mid-April at the latest,” Adametz said.
However, the township contends that the original plans for the sports park called for operation during daylight only, and any deviation would require the owners to submit another land development plan to the planning commission. These original plans for the park were approved in January 2014, before the park opened in 2015.
The township accused Adametz of violating four separate provisions of its zoning ordinance by installing lights without going through the proper procedure.
“Because Mr. Adametz had received a letter from the township advising him that his land development plan was approved in the past, he knew or should have known how an approval of a land development plan is demonstrated,” wrote the township in its denial decision.
Adametz had attempted to install lights around the driving range on four separate occasions since the park’s conception in 2009, but was thwarted each time either due to the township’s actions or external complications.
“We tried this a couple of years ago, and COVID stopped it because the fixtures were coming out of Germany,” Adametz said. “They shut down in Germany a lot longer than we did in the United States.”
By the time the cease and desist order arrived Aug. 25, the lights had already been built, and the owners had spent a total of $144,255 on their installation. Adametz testified during the two months that the lights were turned on, the park gained roughly $20,000 in added revenue.
Normally, the park closes just before sunset. With the lights installed and turned on, Adametz was able to keep the driving range open until 10 p.m.
“The driving range lights are essential to the facility being financially viable,” Adametz said.
During the zoning hearing in November, which lasted multiple hours and ended without a decision rendered, the township called four witnesses who testified the lights made it difficult to drive west on Route 228 at night.
Two of those witnesses — Marty McKinney and Brett Schultz — are members of the Adams Township planning commission.
During the hearing, Adametz contended that he had never received a complaint about the lights while they were in operation, although he had received complaints about seemingly every other part of the park.
“In the type of business that I'm in, people complain about everything,” Adametz said. “They complain about everything, and we’ve never had a single complaint about the lights.”
During the Nov. 8 zoning hearing, Adametz brought in Chris Krasny as an expert witness on lighting. Krasny testified that the lighting at the driving range was well within the limits established in the zoning ordinance.
According to documents reviewed by the Butler Eagle, the township disregarded Krasny’s testimony because, in part, his report allegedly contained “a number of errors ranging from spelling mistakes to names of certain roads/areas.” The document also said much of the testimony wasn’t relevant.
The sports park is being represented by the law firm Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham. A status conference for this case is scheduled for 1 p.m. June 21 at the Butler County Courthouse.
