The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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A new practice baseball field at Emporia High School, putting down turf at Soden’s Grove, new ballfields at Whittier Park, upgrades to fields at Peter Pan Park and a new ballpark complex next to Jones Aquatic Center.

After considering the different possibilities and hashing out what’s most important to them, the Emporia Recreation Commission staff liked those five options the best.

The problem is the money isn’t there to do them all or even most of them. Even with trimmed-down costs, the price tag exceeds ERC’s financial capacity.

“It’s obvious we don’t have the resources to do all this,” said board member Roger Hartsook. “If we take a third of the funding for new improvements, a third of it for maintenance and third for programming, that doesn’t leave us a lot of money.”

The ERC started receiving additional property tax money this year — approximately $425,000 extra— which has sparked months of debate on how to repair, consolidate, remove or build ballfields.

Vance Rzepka of VSR Design tried to whittle down the cost of each of the five projects, but they still ranged from $470,000 for the new high school field to $5.7 million for the new complex northwest of town.

After hearing details about each option at Monday’s meeting, board members discussed where to go from here.

Commission Chairman Jim Markowitz wasn’t opposed to getting public feedback and having an informal meeting with Rzepka to break down the plans further.

“At what point do we want to look at this in an open forum setting to get community feedback and how they feel about the different areas of town we are looking at?” he said. “What’s going to have the biggest impact initially, and can we afford it?”

Board member Mike Helbert said enough with the meetings.

“I don’t think we would gain anything more by having another planning meeting,” he said. “It’s time for us to ante up and say these are the priorities we are going to go for.”

Helbert argued that the board should come up with its vision first and then share it with the public.

Board member Britton Hart agreed, saying they needed to pick the projects.

“We can do one and two, and three and four will have to wait until the economy turns around,” Hart said.

Markowitz said one idea is to have each commissioner make a list of priorities and compare the lists at the November board meeting.

Rzepka said an alternative approach is coming up with a dollar amount and then telling him to design something for that amount of money.

“You could say, ‘Here is what I have. What’s the best way to put that to work,’” Rzepka said.

The ERC paid Rzepka $12,180 to examine seven parks in town, including Jones Park and the land next to Jones Aquatic Center. Last month, Rzepka presented initial ideas. Board members asked for input from the recreation center staff as to what improvements are most needed and most desired.

Tom McEvoy, ERC director, said the elements most important to staff were functionality, potential use, landscaping and visual appeal, shade, and ancillary items, such as playgrounds. From this list, they eliminated Hornet Diamond, Santa Fe Park and Jones Park.

That left a list of five. The first was a new field at Emporia High School, next to the turf field used for soccer and football.

“We need three full-size diamonds in Emporia,” McEvoy said. “We have one.”

The field would be used for practices by the EHS baseball teams. Junior varsity and C teams could play games there. It also could be used for ERC summer league practices, games and tournaments.

ERC and Emporia school district administrators have discussed splitting the cost of the field. The estimated cost would be $260,000 for the school district and $210,000 for the ERC.

“The school district would pay for grading the field and putting out fences while the ERC would pay for lights, dugouts and pads for bleachers,” Rzepka said.

The layout for Whittier Park would be four T-ball diamonds and four youth ballfields. The initial cost was $4.9 million, but Rzepka took some elements out to lower the cost to $3.67 million, which includes two parking lots and a maintenance building. A loop trail is also an option, he said.

Rzepka took out some outfield drainage elements to trim the turfing Soden’s Grove cost from about $900,000 to $677,000.

More savings were achieved at the Optimist Diamonds at Peter Pan Park, where the concession/restroom cutbacks helped drop the price from $1.74 million to $875,000.

A new complex near the aquatic center still would cost $5.7 million, though that was down from the $6.5 million presented last time.

“It won’t be a Taj Mahal, but it would still be pretty nice,” Rzepka said.