STARKVILLE — With Cornerstone Park officially opening a year ago, things are looking up for the Starkville Parks and Recreation Department.
During the board of alderman work session Friday morning, Interim General Manager Doug Heflin and Sports Facilities Companies Vice President of Venue Management Cole Lacey presented an update on the department’s performance and its goals for 2024-2025.
“We do not have to be just your traditional parks and rec,” Heflin said. “Your traditional … sports facilities and tourism. Let’s be different in the way we do things.”
Over the past fiscal year, the parks and recreation department had an estimated economic impact of more than $12 million, with about $9.3 million of that coming from Cornerstone Park.
The baseball/softball complex hosted 21 events in the past year, bringing in more than 29,000 visitors, according to a business and operating plan provided to The Dispatch. Nearly 50% of those visitors, Lacey said, are coming from more than 40 miles away.
“This is more proof of what Cornerstone was built for and what it’s doing,” Lacey said.
For this fiscal year, the department’s budget is roughly $2.5 million, the operating plan said, with its goal for overall economic impact set at $15 million.
The department is planning to grow its impact in a variety of ways, Heflin said, including increasing participation in parks programs, facility rentals and sports tourism events.
When it comes to program participation, Heflin said, the department hopes to start new programs and restart other non-sport pre-COVID programs.
In the past two years, Heflin said, the department’s youth program participation has grown to 2,458 participants, a 102% increase, including soccer, kickball, flag football, track, softball, basketball and baseball.
But the department’s adult programs have experienced “slight decline,” Heflin said, since the adult program basketball was moved to the fall due to gym renovations at the Travis Outlaw Center. The operating plan shows that more than 300 adults participated in close to 200 softball games in 2024, though other participation in other adult programs – like kickball, pickleball and its new water aerobics program – was not available.
The department’s goal for 2024-2025 is to reach 3,500 participants in all of its programs, Heflin said.
Heflin said the department also hopes to increase its facility rentals, with each facility rented at least 25 times this year. Last year, park facilities only saw 241 rentals, with 213 of those coming from the Travis Outlaw Center annex, another 17 coming from the building’s gym and pavilions only hitting 11 rentals.
But with the Needmore Community Center set to open with a ribbon-cutting on Oct. 25, and the department starting to offer birthday party packages this fall, the number of facility rentals for parties will increase, he said.
Usage of Moncrief Pool has jumped nearly 72%, Heflin said, from 2,135 entries in FY 2023 to 3,665 entries in FY 2024. Sales of family passes and single passes were also up, along with swim lessons and the number of parties and events held at the pool. These numbers were boosted by the water aerobics program, he said.
Lacey attributed a great deal of the growth to the pool’s manager taking the initiative to actively market the space for pool parties and other events in the community.
“She’s one of those people where something comes in her mind and she goes and does it,” Lacey said.
The city is also aiming to bring in 35 sports tourism events in the next year, Lacey said, with further marketing of Cornerstone and other department assets.
With the city’s 2016 master plan starting to age, Lacey said, Sports Facilities Companies’ advisory team is also preparing to start refreshing the plan through a 28-week process, which will include community input and reevaluating the department’s current assets.
Mayor Lynn Spruill emphasized that this refreshed plan, like the 2016 plan, should be one that the board can actually implement in the city.
“I don’t want a product or a piece of paper or a … master plan that we put on the shelf,” Spruill said. “I want a master plan that (will give) a way forward.”
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