On Monday, October 15, the Plainsboro Planning Board will review an application for field lights to be installed at High School North. The hearing, the outcome, and any potential effects on private homes in the area are expected to be completely different than the application heard last fall in front of West Windsor’s Planning Board, for which residents had hired an attorney as the meeting lasted until 3 a.m. the following day.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro High School Booster Club, the same applicant that went before West Windsor’s board last year, is the applicant for the Plainsboro hearing.
“The booster club — independent of the school district — got enough money to contract lights for HSN. They will present their site plan with an application for a variance for a height requirement,” said Plainsboro Planning Director Lester Varga.
The lights will be on four poles, each at a height of 70 feet. Each pole will include 11 light fixtures, and Varga said visors on them will direct light down onto the field and into the end zones, with some projected onto the stands. According to Varga the closest residential property in Plainsboro behind High School North is 500 feet away on Blossom Hill Drive.
“These lights are designed that beyond 100 feet they provide no substantial amount of illumination,” he said.
Varga anticipates no major problems for the board to review as he said the application presented a “very restrictive outline” for where the lights will be and their hours of operation. As is the case with the new field lights at High School South, they will not be used on Saturdays and Sundays.
“They’ve assured us through their testimony that lights will be on no later than 9 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, and at the latest 10:30 p.m. on Fridays for some football games. They are never to be used on Saturdays and Sundays,” Varga said.
