To a growing number of Knothole coaches, community groups and city officials, the Cincinnati Public Schools' rebuilding plan comes at a cost even steeper than its $985 million price tag.

        The plan will rebuild decaying school buildings, but at the expense of dozens of baseball diamonds, soccer fields and football fields throughout the city.

        At places like Crawford Field in College Hill, Rapid Run Park in Price Hill and the Turkey Ridge fields on the East End, the school facilities plan is endangering the grassy lots where many Cincinnati children spend their summers in favor of new buildings where they will spend their springs, autumns and winters.

        With construction a year away, coaches are scrambling for alternatives.

        “When we found out we were not going to have that access to Crawford, my first question was, where am I going to go? How am I going to keep these kids occupied?” said Anthony R. Harris, president of the Hilltop Youth Athletic Association. The football and cheerleading program serves 300 children 5-12, and has been playing and practicing at Crawford for 35 years.

        “Don't get me wrong. We're not opposed to the school board improving these buildings,” Mr. Harris said. “But there's not a whole lot of land to go around here.”

        In the next few years, coaches all over the city will have the same dilemma.

        School officials are expected to make a presentation on the issue to a committee of the school board today. Because the facilities plan will eventually rebuild, renovate or replace 66 schools citywide over the next 10 years, there's no definitive report on how many athletic fields will be affected.

        A recent draft report by the Cincinnati Recreation Commission raised questions, concerns or objections about building plans at 19 sites from Sayler Park to Madisonville.

        Though most of the concerns involved athletic fields, the building plan may also affect recreation centers, playgrounds and swimming pools.

        Cincinnati Councilman Chris Monzel calls it a “recreation crisis” that the school board has been slow to address. And the joint city-school committee created to work on the issue has met only twice, he said.

        “The tendency is to look ahead and say, "We have plenty of time to address this,'” he said. “No, time has run out.”

        The construction probably won't affect youth leagues until next summer, at the earliest, school officials said.

        But one coach, Jim Burdette, said his baseball team has already been kicked off the Turkey Ridge fields by a school contractor collecting soil samples. School officials apologized for what they said was a scheduling problem.

        School officials say the crunch will be relieved when existing buildings are demolished and turned into green space.

        But because many of those old buildings are considered “swing schools” — where students from neighboring schools will go while their schools are rebuilt — those buildings may not be torn down for 10 years.

        And because the schools are often trading tiny 2- or 3-acre plots for sites as large as 10 acres, a simple trade-off could still result in a net loss of space.

        As baseball, softball, soccer and football teams — for youth and adults — will be forced to compete for fewer and fewer fields, tension among sports seems inevitable.

        “You go around the city and they have soccer fields from here to the moon,” said Mr. Harris, the College Hill football coach. “These soccer programs come from suburbia and play on our fields. We have to go tooth and nail to find a place to play, and we're the ones who have to pay taxes.”

        Many youth coaches gripe that adult teams — which can pay higher registration fees — get preferential treatment on some fields. And they're grumbling about a Board of Health ruling that requires them to pay for portable toilets.

        There's another consequence to the shrinking green space. As more activities are compressed onto fewer fields, the already poorly maintained recreation spaces will see more wear and tear.

        In the inner city, vacant land is as scarce as vacant buildings are plentiful. Parents, coaches and Knothole commissioner Jim Lippert complain there's already a shortage of fields.

        Fred Carnes coaches kids from the West End to Roselawn. He first realized the effect on Avondale-area fields when he saw the plans come through the blueprint company he works for.

        “It's really going to affect us in the Avondale area. We already have a shortage of fields that are kept up to standard that our kids can play on,” he said.

        Mr. Carnes said coaches in the central city have been working hard to increase participation in baseball and even piloted a post-riot program to have African-American youth play more games with children from white neighborhoods.

        Those games, he said, could be in jeopardy.

        “When we have these kids on the field playing ball, that's less time that they can get involved in vandalism or whatever,” he said. “There's a misperception that kids in the city just don't play baseball anymore, and that's just not true.”

        Complicating the athletic field issue are the agreements that govern their operation and maintenance. Some fields, like Crawford, are owned by the schools and maintained by the city. Others are just the opposite.

        “We can't promise everybody that if you played at Crawford Field for the last 20 years, you can continue to use it,” said Sally Warner, a school board member who serves as the board's representative on the Cincinnati Recreation Commission.

        “But no child will be refused athletic participation. Will some of those children be inconvenienced, or their parents? I don't think we can avoid that.”

        City recreation director Jim Garges and school facilities director Mike Burson echo those sentiments, and say the problems will be worked out in the long run — even if there's a short-term loss of fields.

        Solutions are already being proposed. The baseball diamonds displaced at Crawford Field could be moved to McAvoy Park, just a half-mile east on W. North Bend Road, and to a new field behind the former Emerson North Hospital on Hamilton Avenue.

        Even then, there's an issue of cost. Grading, landscaping and constructing backstops and soccer goals could cost $75,000. While the Cincinnati Park Board has agreed to use McAvoy for athletic fields — a rare concession for a board that values the “quiet enjoyment” of parks above all else — there's no agreement on who will pay for the improvements.

        In Price Hill, the issues could be more difficult to resolve. A plan to move Carson Elementary to ball fields at Rapid Run Park has rankled many in Price Hill.

        They're insisting that the school board change course completely.

        “This is a huge commitment of public dollars, and we think it's great. There's no doubt it needs to be done,” said Pete Witte, president of the Price Hill Civic Club, the neighborhood's community council. "But the bigger point to us is, can we also work out a way to use this money to eliminate our blight and eyesores, and get a double whammy out of it?”

        Mr. Witte wants the schools to take vacant buildings on Glenway Avenue — by eminent domain, if necessary — and tear them down.

        Mr. Witte and State Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-Price Hill, have suggested that, if push comes to shove, they'll use whatever leverage they can find to save Rapid Run Park.

        “They're going to ask for a big bond levy,” Mr. Driehaus said. “I think it's in the best interests of the school board to make sure they have as much community support as possible, because if people feel like their plan doesn't help the whole community, they won't support it.”
       

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