It’s possible youth baseball teams at Propst Park will start their season later this month where they always have — three grass fields in the lower portion of the park.
They won’t play there long, Parks Director Greg Lewis said.
Four converted turf fields at the top of the hill should be complete by early May, if not before, Lewis said. Turf, the final piece needed to finish those fields, could arrive as quickly as next week.
That means T-ball, which starts April 22, and baseball, which begins a week later, will play most of their schedule at their new home.
Converting the former softball fields to turf baseball fields is the first phase in a $4.4 million parks improvement project that began late last year. The city is using $1.4 million from tourism sales tax revenue earmarked for parks and borrowed $3 million in bonds to cover the rest.
While most of the plan is concentrated on Propst Park, the overall project will touch eight city parks. All work should be finished by spring 2025, City Engineer Kevin Stafford said.
“It’s going to go pretty quick,” he said. “The lion’s share will be spent by the end of this year.”
Once the turf fields are finished, Stafford said, they are convertible for different age groups and base widths. They even come with pitching mounds that can be removed.
“So, softball could play on these turf fields as well,” he said.
In addition to converting the old softball fields, Lewis said new pavilion roofs have been installed at Propst and Hank Aaron parks, and Townsend Community Center has a new floor.
Neel-Schaffer, where Stafford serves as North Mississippi manager, is supervising projects in the parks plan valued at more than $75,000 — turf, lighting, fencing and paving, for example — which require a competitive bidding process. Lewis is managing quotes and work for the smaller projects.
What’s next
Even with the turf fields at Propst finished, Stafford said the field area will still need work.
After the season is over, workers will install new lighting and lay concrete “from dugout to dugout behind every field.”
Work also will begin on converting the three existing baseball fields for softball, still with natural surfaces, as well as new lighting for those. Pickleball courts will also come to Propst Park.
The project also includes parking lot paving at Sandfield and Northaven Woods parks, resurfacing the walking track at East Columbus Gym and $410,000 in combined upgrades to the Propst splash pad and playground.
On Lewis’ side, he’s managing lights, paint and a new floor at East Columbus Gym, a new floor at Sandfield Community Center, as well as minor playground upgrades at several parks.
Though bids on turf and fencing for the baseball fields exceeded the budget by $400,000, both Stafford and Lewis said they are looking for cost savings elsewhere to make up the difference.
One way to do that is breaking the project into smaller pieces and pursuing specialized bidders, rather than bidding the entire plan as one project.
“We’re trying to not get one big lump sum (general contractor) that’s marking up a bunch of subs,” Stafford said. “If it’s concrete, we’re getting quotes from concrete contractors. If it’s fencing, we’re getting quotes from fencing.”
He said the city is even seeing if Columbus Light and Water can buy the lights at cost.
“Light and Water can even install some of this. … We may bid it out and compare if it’s cheaper to use Light and Water. … versus a third-party contractor.”
Baseball/softball by the numbers
In 2023, Propst Park baseball and softball programs drew 527 participants across seven leagues and a travel affiliate, according to data The Dispatch obtained from the city through a public records request.
Those programs more than covered their expenses, netting the parks department more than $8,300 in operating profit on total revenues of $31,210.
Last year when the city council debated whether to borrow funds for the parks plan, Lewis argued that viable leagues at Propst Park were essential to the city’s youth and that many participants lived very close to the park. Traveling to the now complete $12 million Lowndes County Sportsplex west of Columbus, he argued, would create an extra burden.
Per the records the city released, 33 (6%) of last year’s baseball and softball league participants lived within a mile of the park (nine lived within a half-mile), while 142 lived farther than five miles from the park. The remainder, 352 participants, lived between one and five miles from Propst.
“The majority, and I’m going to give you a safe number of 80%, of those who live over three miles from the park, are coming from out east,” Lewis said Thursday. “… They would still get to Propst Park before they got to another one.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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