It might be a stretch, but Caledonia could be playing night soccer by the time the town’s recreation season begins in late November.
“We’d love for that to happen, but everything would have to fall just right,” Caledonia Mayor Mitch Wiggins said Friday.
Whether the lighting on the town’s soccer complex, located on 20 acres adjacent to Ola J. Pickett Park, is ready in time for the soccer season, Wiggins said the project is moving quickly now that its funding appears likely.
“We are working on an application for a (Mississippi Development Authority) grant for $150,000 and we should have that application in well before the deadline at the end of August,” Wiggins said. “We’ve also secured some in kind-funding, which we believe will come pretty close to providing the match the grant required.”
Completion of the soccer complex has been a priority for the Caledonia Park Commission since the commission formed last fall.
Wiggins said Lowndes County School District has given the town light poles which can be used at the complex. Additionally, the Caledonia Natural Gas District will provide the trenching work needed to lay the utility lines.
“Between those two in-kind contributions, we’ll be pretty close to the 10-percent ($15,000) match the grant requires,” he said.
The complex will feature two small youth fields as well as two adult regulation-size fields that if need be can be converted to four more youth fields, Wiggins said.
“We sort of copied the model of a complex the city of Gulfport used when they built their fields seven or eight years ago,” Wiggins said. “It gives us the flexibility we need for it.”
Another park project should get underway next month, said Parks Director Chris Clardy.
“We’re going to be remodeling the press box/concession stand,” Clardy said. “The parks commission will choose one of the three bids we had for that at our meeting on Aug. 6 and we should be able to get going on that pretty soon after that.”
The funds for that project will come from the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors, which allocated up to $25,000 in capital project funds for the town this spring.
Clardy said he expects that money to cover the cost of the renovations at the press box and concession stand as well as some work on dugout roofs for some of the park’s five playing fields.
“We had a contractor come out and look at the press box and concession stand and we ran into some structural problems that need to be fixed,” Clardy said. “One of the things was the windows in the press box. The windows were vertical windows, but they were put in sideways, I guess so they could slide the windows open and closed. The problem was that the windows were water-proofed at the top and bottom, but not the sides. That meant water damage when it rained.”
Clardy said the building also lacked some roof flashing work, again creating water damage.
“I don’t know how old the building is,” Clardy said. “But it’s well over 20 years. I doubt there’s ever been anything done to it aside from putting a coat of paint on it a few times.”
Clardy said he hopes any additional funds available after that work is done will go to refurbishing the dug-outs.
“It’s really simple — two-by-fours with sheet-metal roofs, so the materials won’t be that expensive,” he said. “With a few men willing to volunteer to put in some hard work for a couple days, we should be able to take care of that pretty easily.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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