Most of Oxford’s Choccolocco Park won’t be ready for public use until the fall, city officials and contractors said this week, which means some events scheduled this summer at the sports complex’s ballfields may not happen.

City officials’ estimates earlier this year put the park’s full completion date sometime in August, but that’s now been pushed to Oct. 1.

Construction of the $34 million park was split into phases, with the signature softball and baseball fields — built to collegiate conference standards — part of the first phase. That work ended months ago, according to Oxford Parks and Recreation Department director Don Hudson, before the Ohio Valley Conference agreed to bring its softball championship to Choccolocco Park. Four other baseball fields are finished “for the most part,” Hudson said.

What’s still ongoing is construction of just about everything else at the 360-acre park: five more softball fields, a collegiate-level track and field facility, four soccer fields, a 3- mile walking track, and a 30-acre lake.

“The timeline has been pushed back and pushed back ... I’m disappointed, but what can you do?” Hudson said in a phone interview Thursday.

Much of the holdup, according to Danny Turner, co-owner of Eugene Turner Construction, the Anniston-based contractor building the complex, has to do with the lake.

Turner said he’s got several diesel-powered pumps working 24 hours a day to remove water filling the deepening crater that will become that lake. The dirt his workers remove there is taken and compacted to make level foundations for buildings and ballfields, but rain has kept the lake soil wet and unusable.

Hudson hoped to have at least the four baseball fields open for youth and high school sports events scheduled for the summer through Parks and Recreation. But with construction going on nearby, Hudson said, the city or its contractor would be liable for any accidents that might occur during the fields’ use.

The department director said members of the City Council are against opening the fields until all work is done to avoid that potential liability. Efforts Thursday to reach Council President Steven Waits and Councilman Phil Gardner, who lead the council’s involvement in the park’s construction, were unsuccessful.

Keeping the fields closed could mean canceling Excel Baseball Academy’s Memorial Day Classic, a tournament set to be played at the park May 27 through May 30.

The Oxford-based academy, formed in 2003 by Josh Beshears and Matthew Maniscalco, advertises the tournament on its website for athletes under the age of 18, with $500 spots for interested teams.

Reached by phone Thursday, Beshears said he’s got 30 teams lined up to play at the park. He’d just learned he might not have the fields he needs to pull that off.

Fencing off access to areas still under construction could be a solution, Hudson said, and a meeting between city officials and contractor representatives today would explore that option.

“Hopefully we can give them an answer tomorrow afternoon,” Hudson said of the academy’s owners. Beshears is hopeful it will be the answer he wants.

“I feel very confident that we’re going to play,” he said.

Tallying figures

Oxford’s leaders for nearly a decade have planned the park’s opening, which they see as a way to bring traveling teams of athletes, their families and fans to the city’s hotels, restaurants, and stores.

Securing regional sporting events — such as the OVC’s softball championship — would be valuable publicity, showing Oxford as a noteworthy city for sports enthusiasts, successive City Councils have decided.

Hudson and members of the council view the OVC tournament — which brought 4,126 people to the park’s stands — as a successful first venture into hosting such events.

That championship revolved around the park’s signature softball field, and according to Hudson, cost the city about $12,000 to pull off.

That money was spent on a banquet for eight visiting teams, hotel rooms, rental cars and promotional materials. It doesn’t include $6,000 the city pays each month to Birmingham-based Honours Golf to keep the fields pristine.

Meanwhile, the city took in more than $15,000 from ticket sales and concessions at the tournament, according to Hudson.

That’s an easy figure to get. Measuring the tournament’s larger impact on Oxford’s economy, city Finance Director Alton Craft said Wednesday, will be harder.

“We won’t know that until next month when we get the lodging taxes back,” Craft said. His staff will then have to compare that amount with what was collected this time last year to find the bump.

Harder still will be calculating how much the teams and their entourages spent at restaurants or stores, Craft said, but “we ought to be able to come up with most of it ... we’ll estimate it, to a degree. It’ll be close.”

 

Source : annistonstar.com

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