Lights at Lyons Stadium, Bushwhacker Field top parks board improvement list

By Ralph Pokorny

Nevada Daily Mail

Next year will look a lot brighter for baseball and softball players and fans at Lyons Stadium and Bushwhacker Field.

Replacing the lights and perhaps improving the parking will be one of the first projects the Nevada Parks Board looks at when the city's renewed one-half cent park and recreation sales tax takes effect on Jan. 1.

The major project to be undertaken with the renewed tax is the community center complex; however, replacing the lights at Lyons Stadium will be relative easy and will not be a high cost project, park board member Nora Quitno said during a special meeting, which was held Tuesday evening at the Community Center, to work on the board's work plan for the next three years.

"It could be done in 2006 while we're working on the Community Center," she said.

Carol Branham, park and recreation director said that most of the design work for the new lights was already done in 1999 by a company that they had talked to about the project.

"A lot of companies will do preliminary designs in the hope of getting to do a project," she said.

Another possible project for 2006 would be improvements at Earp Park, which is located next to the fire department's facility on Austin Boulevard.

"This would be such a visible feature," Branham said, adding that they could at least develop the plan for the park and perhaps do phase one of the improvements.

One of the possible improvements at Earp Park would be the addition of a "sprayground" similar to the one at the Aquatic Center.

"Many people are anxious about when the projects will be done," Branham said.

Much of 2006 will be taken up by soliciting consultants with an expertise in park and recreation projects and interviewing some of them.

This is the same process the park board followed for the projects funded by the current sales tax.

Branham told the board another thing the staff will probably do is make some field trips to area towns like Harrisonville, Grandview and Joplin, to look at what they have done. Harrisonville and Grandview both have new community centers and Joplin has been "doing some new things," she said.

When the park board was developing the plan for the Walton Family Aquatic Center they took trips to several area water parks including one in Monett, which is the home of the company that built the Aquatic Center's water slide.

Part of the planning process for the improvements at the municipal golf course, the community center and the trails as well as the enclosed picnic shelter to be built at Radio Springs Park this year is to develop a style to tie the park system together, Branham said.

The enclosed picnic shelter will be the final project from the list of projects on the 1999 sales tax ballot and will be the only sales tax funded project to be undertaken this year.

Another issue that Branham said the board may want to look at in the next year or so is financing the construction of a new community center so it can be completed before the nine-year tax period is over.

This would allow the money from the tax to go farther, since the cost of everything will be higher in six or seven years than it is now, she said.