The Athabasca Regional Multiplex Sports Park Project is well underway.
Multiplex manager Rob Balay said the soccer pitches are 99-per-cent complete, while the ball diamonds are at 85 per cent.
The whole project started in 2009 when a stakeholder group formed and created the project outline.
A grant was applied for and received in 2010. During Athabasca’s centennial dinner last July, then-Premier Ed Stelmach presented $600,000 towards the sports park project because of the community’s help with Slave Lake evacuees.
The grant has allowed the Multiplex to build three more baseball diamonds on top of the two existing slo-pitch diamonds. The three diamonds will be for bantam, peewee and mosquito levels. The plan also budgets for two regulation–sized soccer fields with irrigation, and one medium-sized practice field.
The project includes a granular trail system connecting the sports fields with the Multiplex, Athabasca University and town trails.
The trail system will also connect the future parking lot, and tree planting has been proposed to provide separation between the fields and diamonds.
The total cost of the project will total $1.2 million. When a grant was considered for a sports park in 2009, the Town of Athabasca denied the application. Now, two years later, the application no longer includes an outdoor rink, due to inflation of costs.
Although on first pass the town denied the application, it only slowed down the process, but didn’t deter the stakeholders.
Balay states that the soccer fields need some fencing and exterior ground work, and then they can be classified as complete.
However, the fields will not be used until the spring.
“We expect to have the entire project wrapped up by the end of August,” he said.
“The soccer fields should be good to go next spring, and the ball diamonds should be finished around the end of May.”
In the future, Athabasca and visiting teams may have access to washrooms, lights and a concession stand, as well as electronic scoreboards.
“There was a thought to have lights at some point, but that is a very expensive item so I don’t know if that will ever happen,” he said. “However that was included in the cost of the project.”
Even with weeks of rain, the project is close to being on schedule.
“I think we are pretty close to on schedule,” he said. “Obviously when it rains every night and you’re doing dirt work, it is not the greatest combination, but we are very close to being on time and more importantly we will be on budget.”
