It’s been almost three years since Lowndes County supervisors voted to purchase 89 acres west of the Tombigbee River to be used to build a sports complex for its fledgling recreation department.
Until Monday, the project seemed to have been put on the back-burner even as the county continues to pay $100,000 per year toward the purchase of the property.
“I don’t know why that is,” said Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Trip Hairston, who didn’t join the board until 2020. “But, my feeling was that if we’re going to own property, we need to do something with it. It’s not fair to the taxpayers if we just let it sit there.”
During a planning session following Monday’s board meeting, supervisors finally got a look at possible options for the property.
Joey Henderson, of JBHM Architects, provided the board with a master plan, which he described as a “Christmas list, with anything and everything you could imagine,” along with five other less expensive options. The master plan is estimated to cost between $29 million and $29.5 million, with the other options ranging from a low of $14 million to $22.5 million.
But even before supervisors began weighing the merits of those options, District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks took the discussion back to the fall of 2016, when supervisors announced their intent for the county to leave the Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority, a joint parks and recreation department operated by the city of Columbus and the county since 1990. A year later, the split became official, and by the following year, supervisors had agreed to purchase the land for its own complex.
Brooks said the county’s split from the CLRA created the potential for segregated recreation in the county.
“What I’m hearing is that there are very few, if any, Black kids playing at Lake Lowndes and very few white kids at Propst Park,” Brooks said. “I’m concerned about the directions we are headed. Recreation is the one component of quality of life that should be the most integrated, where kids and adults can come together to have fun and put on blinders, and long-term relationships are developed.
“In retrospect, the decision to split was a bad idea,” he continued. “At the time, we said we were going to give the city some money for recreation and we were getting out. Now, we’re back in recreation in a big way. Before we proceed any further, we need to look at the philosophy of recreation for the whole community, what impact it’s going to have and what we need to do that would be in the best interest of the entire community and not just the county.”
Supervisors Harry Sanders and John Holliman, of Districts 1 and 3 respectively, insisted the complex would be open to all county residents, including city residents, but did not address how the complex might affect existing recreation programs in the county.
“How many baseball and softball fields can the county sustain before we reach a breaking point?” Brooks asked, also noting that an aquatics feature could impact programs at the YMCA and Mississippi University for Women.
Options for the complex
Supervisors then turned their attention to the options presented by Henderson. The master plan includes a substantial water park feature, which would cost roughly $6 million and include a laned swimming area suitable for competition, a water slide/play area and a lazy river feature, based on the Fayette Aquatic Center in Alabama.
Sanders asked Henderson about the cost of operations for the center. Henderson said he found the Fayette facility’s budget online and said over the past five years, the park lost money each year, ranging from $1,500 in 2016 to $63,000 in 2020. He attributed last year’s losses to COVID-19.
“But part of that is a payment (for the property),” Henderson said, noting that the payments were around the $100,000 mark. “You take that out, and they actually would have made money every year, based on what I could see online.”
Most supervisors seemed to prefer Option 3, which would include five fields — something parks director Roger Short said would be needed to host tournaments — a walking trail, an administrative building/multipurpose building and an emergency shelter at a cost of $14.5 million, the least expensive of the options.
District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith argued that if the county was going to proceed, it should not be hesitant to spend.
“If we’re going to do this and be competitive, let’s go for it,” Smith said.
Hairston said he agrees with Brooks that whatever is built should be open, available and accessed by the entire community.
“We have a great soccer complex (in downtown Columbus) that everyone uses and that’s the model,” Hairston said. “If we do this properly, it is something for everyone in the community and gives us an opportunity to bring in tournaments and other events.”
County administrator Jay Fisher noted that some of the $11.5 million of American Rescue Act money provided to the county could be used to build the complex.
“I know that’s something they are talking about using that money for in Starkville,” he said.
Brooks said that while he is concerned about how the complex might impact other existing programs and create the unintended consequences of separate and unequal recreation, he likes the ideas for the complex.
“I’m not opposed to any of the plans,” he said. “In fact, I agree with Jeff (Smith). If we are going to spend $18 million, $20 million, let’s go on and spend all of it. I’m not opposed to the sportsplex. I just want it to be comprehensive so that all the stakeholders benefit — not just people in the county, but people in the city, too.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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