Mercy plans for new gym, pool

“We are doing all we can to stay viable as an all girls school. We recognize having a lack of facilities is negatively impacting our admissions,” Brosnan said. “Our school, though we are strong, would be able to be much stronger.”

The new facilities would be built where existing and currently unused tennis courts are located on campus, bordering Adeline Drive.

Mercy High School is a sponsored ministry of the Sisters of Mercy, operating within Kohl Mansion and, despite the new building, the school has “no plan” to increase enrollment through its conditional use permit or increase Kohl Mansion rentals, Brosnan said.

The new facilities would typically only be used until 9 p.m. for sports practices, games and school programming. The hours of use end time is listed as 10 p.m. to accommodate rare situations when games had been delayed or sports teams made it to state tournaments, Brosnan said.

“We believe that would be incredibly rare, nor do we want our student athletes or staff to be on campus that late,” she said.

Neighbors who spoke at the Planning Commission meeting were generally supportive but expressed concerns around a 10 p.m. cutoff time as potentially too late for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Nearby resident Karen Dittman said the impacts of Mercy on surrounding housing is “cumulative” — pointing to enrollment increases over time — and asked for stricter standards.

“I’d like to see not just more conservative ending times, I’d like to see some numbers on how many events you can have late, and what the consequences are if you run over,” she said.

Planning commissioners suggested possibly identifying potential dates that the school could see late-night games in the conditional use permit for the project.

“I don’t know if the [conditional use permit] could be written in a manner to accommodate the home game dates for the school year,” Commissioner Audrey Tse said. “That obviously will change year to year — I think it’s 15 days out of the year.”

School traffic continues to be an issue for the neighboring community. Brosnan said a traffic study found the school creates a 10-minute traffic blockage during afternoon pickup and that Mercy is committed to finding solutions, like early dismissal privileges for seniors and potential block scheduling.

However, Mercy is currently generating fewer car trips than allowed under their current conditional use permit, Brosnan said.

“I ask that we be very conservative in applying maximum cars. Although we’re only talking about the Mercy gym, the Mercy gym does not exist in a vacuum,” neighbor Christina Hablet said.

Some questions were raised about increasing tree plantings and intentional landscaping to separate the facility from the Kohl Mansion front exterior and commissioners acknowledged public concern around traffic.

But planning commissioners maintained support for moving forward with the design of the project.

“It’s a textbook compatible building next to a very distinctive historical building,” Commissioner Walker Shores said. “I really don't have anything I could offer to improve on it. I think it's perfect.”

The project will return to the Planning Commission in coming months for California Environmental Quality Act review.

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