SOLEDAD — City Council approved a recommendation to go forward with constructing three ball fields as part of the Gallardo Park improvements.
“The benefits of doing the entire project at once is you save about $200,000,” said Public Works Director Donald Wilcox. “The other issue with doing them separately is we will have a vacant third ball field if we just do the two fields first and come back later, if and when we get funding for the third field.”
The drawback of constructing all three ball fields is paying for the project up front. The city has found some funding from the RDA bond proceeds to do the base bid of $1.464 million. The third field is an additional $684,000.
City Manager Michael McHatten “has put together a funding package for most of it,” Wilcox said. “About $500,000 out of the $684,000 is through a combination of true-up RDA bond proceeds that will be realized later this year and about $200,000 in park impact fees.”
The third ball field will not be lighted, but the other two ball fields will include lights. To cover the cost of the third ball field, the city also worked with the owner of Sansone Company Inc., Jennifer Sansone and her husband, David, and decided to take out the scoreboards with the hope that donations will be made.
The Gallardo Park improvements are a capacity increasing project for softball, baseball and possibly soccer games.
