If you’ve driven along Smith Valley Road near Craig Park this week, you probably noticed two softball diamonds and several trees were removed.
Greenwood is making way for its new, multi-million dollar Department of Public Works building, which will take up a huge portion of the downtown park. But a new park with more softball diamonds is in the works, city officials said.
Crews recently started laying the groundwork for construction of the new DPW building, which will be a much-needed expansion and extension of the current building located on South Washington Street, on the west side of the park.
The 50,000-square-foot facility will take up the entire southeast corner of the park. The southwest corner will be turned into a natural amphitheater and event space, altogether creating a DPW campus where the public can come to watch the city’s many popular annual events, such as Freedom Festival and WAMMfest, city officials said. The amphitheater will also include a platform for staging.
But that required removing the only two softball diamonds located downtown and trimming the city’s softball league by about 40 percent this year, said Rob Taggart, the city’s parks and recreation director. The league includes several teams of nine or 10 players each, which play against each other in the fall and spring.
The nearby Little League fields, which are not owned by the city, will not be impacted by this construction, said Kevin Steinmetz, Greenwood’s capital projects manager.
“One benefit, we think, in putting (the new DPW building) in Craig Park is that even though we lose those softball fields, the aggregate impact on green space in the whole city is minimized, because it allows us to build a smaller building. So by tacking it on to the existing building, we were able to create a campus rather than going out and buying up a bunch of farmland” Steinmetz said.
A new city park that will feature several more softball and baseball diamonds is in the works on the northwest side of the Interstate 65 and Worthsville Road interchange, between Clark-Pleasant Middle School and the interstate.
The city has hired a landscape architect, and the new park is in the early stages of design and development. It won’t be open until fall 2020, Taggart said. Project costs have not been determined yet.
In the meantime, the city’s league will have to play all of its games at Northeast Park and Westside Park, both of which already have softball fields. But, that means fewer teams will be able to participate until they have enough diamonds to host all of the teams.
Eventually, the city will be able to add even more teams, Taggart said.
The new park will also open the door to more recreational opportunities for Greenwood due to its close proximity to the interstate. Greenwood will become a more attractive competitor to cities and towns up and down the I-65 corridor, he said.
“Those two diamonds (at Craig Park) were constantly under siege for bad drainage,” Taggart said. Leagues often had to continue past the scheduled season ending date to complete their games.
“There were makeup games in the evenings after work. So we made the decision that this is an improvement from what we have, and not only will the league expand and grow, we’re also looking at capturing some more travel teams. So we see this as a huge economic development opportunity for the city from a recreational standpoint,” Taggart said.
The new 30-acre park, which does not have a name yet, will mostly consist of ball fields and green space, he said.
“Long-term, it is going to be a park that will meet a recreation deficiency in that southeast quadrant of the city,” Taggart said.
“We’ve also looked at potentially having some play equipment and a splash pad out there.”
The parks department has known about this for a long time, which is why there is already a plan in place, he said.
“I think from the feedback that we got there was some concern up front about the removal of the diamonds,” Taggart said. “But once we told them about this new and improved facility with better drainage … once they heard that news, I think they realized it’s going to be worth the wait.”
