09-21>9-23-2001 City Council Retreat

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0 Youth Baseball Complex The La Porte Boy's Baseball Association has identified a need for ten youth baseball fields, coupled with additional practice fields, to meet their projected growth pattern over the next ten to twenty years. The Association now conducts its youth baseball program at Fairmont Park. The program has almost 900 youth participants, using seven fields as their base of operations, with practice fields at various sites throughout the City. These seven fields are inadequate to meet the current demand for league and tournament play. The concession, restroom, and pressbox facility was constructed in 1976 and is close to the end of its useful life. The concession facility is overused and is too small to meet current demand. The pressbox serves only four of the seven fields and does not meet current demand. Parking and restroom facilities were not designed and are not adequate to meet the demands of such a large number of participants and their families, particularly on weekends. Farrington Street is generally used for overflow parking, creating a dangerous situation for young children in close proximity with traffic. Fairmont Park is built -out in terms of available space for additional fields or parking. The estimated cost of developing a ten field youth baseball complex is $3.3 million, not including land costs (estimate provided by Randall -Porterfield Architects, Inc.). Because of the high cost, staff is proposing to approach this issue in phases, as outlined in the following option proposals: • Option 1 Two years ago the City purchased 33 acres of land on the west side of La Porte to be developed as a park (referred to hereinafter as Westside Park). The Westside Park property is heavily wooded with a number of large pecan trees. This option would propose developing five or six new youth baseball fields at this site. Advantages: • Would relieve the overcrowding at Fairmont Park. Five of the seven existing fields at Fairmont Park would be retained for use as league fields, giving the Association ten or eleven fields to use for league and tournament play. • Would reduce parking woes, participants should not need to use Farrington for on -street parking. • The other fields would be returned to a more aesthetically pleasing, passive utilization at Fairmont that better fits the needs of the surrounding community. • Fairmont Park could be utilized for younger age groups and Westside Park for the older groups. The Association generally doesn't schedule games for younger participants after 9:00 PM. This would greatly reduce late -night operation of Fairmont and reduce the number of complaints from nearby residents. Westside Park is much more isolated and 11:00 PM usage would not be detrimental to the surrounding community. • This option would use about 20 of the 33 acres and would allow many of the mature pecan trees on the site to be saved. These pecan trees are the focal • point of the park and should be preserved for use by future generations. This option would allow the remaining +/- 13 acres to be developed as a passive park that would complement the ballfield portion of the park. 13.1