Today we reported on the loss of 8.5 acres of athletic fields for the City of Rockville.
Now we can tell you how much it cost the City of Rockville and the State of Maryland to develop those athletic fields. Back in 1999, the investment in creating the Mark Twain School playing fields and amenities was $790,000.
That State of Maryland Program Open Space funding and City of Rockville investment will now be paved over to become a MCPS bus parking lot.
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January 27, 1999
The construction of a new athletic
park at Mark Twain School in Rockville, which will provide the first
regulation-size soccer field in the city, is getting a sizeable amount
of funding from the state.
On Jan. 13, Gov. Parris
N. Glendening announced that the
Board of Public Works had approved
$591,750 from the Department of Natural Resources' Program Open Space to
help design and construct the facility at the school, which is located
at 14501 Avery Road.
Phil Bryan, superintendent of
recreation for the City of Rockville, said the state often gets involved
in the acquisition of recreational lands or the building of
recreational facilities.
Through a collaborative
effort begun last year between the City of Rockville and Mark Twain
School, the lighted sports complex will include two fields which will be
used for softball or baseball in the spring, one measuring 225 feet in
length and one 285 feet in length. In the fall, the fields can be
combined to accommodate soccer teams.
Bryan said the
project will also include a tennis court, a pavilion with restrooms and
a concession area, a playground and paths around the complex.
Bryan
said the total cost of the project is about $790,000 and Project Open
Space will be paying about 75 percent of the cost. He said that funds
for the remaining 25 percent will be included in the city's Capital
Improvements Program.
The city's sports programs
supervisor, Chuck Miller, said last fall that the city decided to work
with Mark Twain because the city needed an official-sized soccer field
and found that Mark Twain had the available space.
He
said the city was also pleased to discover that the site -- flanked by
Rock Creek Regional Park, the city-owned Redgate Golf Course and Norbeck
Road -- would have low-impact effects on people who live in that area.
The
site will also be a tremendous asset to the community and the school,
Miller said, because it will allow for the expansion of adult and
children's sports program so that local teams can play more often during
the week and at night.
The benefit of such a prime
location was also not lost on the governor, who called it "an ideal
location for a lighted recreational complex to serve the nearby families
of Rockville."
"Not only will the facility be the
home of Rockville's youth soccer program, but will serve the needs of
adult recreational soccer and softball teams as well," Glendening said
in a press release.
Groundbreaking for the complex
was originally scheduled for last fall, but the city encountered some
delays, which are common for this type of project, Bryan said. He said
that construction should start in the spring, and is likely to take
approximately two months to complete.
According to
the governor's office, Program Open Space has helped counties and cities
in Maryland acquire more than 140,000 acres for open space and
recreation areas.
