Here’s when Fort Mill will be able to play at the new $8 million Banks Athletic Park
A new construction contract has Fort Mill moving toward a completed Banks Athletic Park by fall 2022, and likely even more construction at a long-time recreation site.
Fort Mill Town Council approved an $8.1 million contract this week with BEAM Construction to create the new 25-acre athletic park near Banks Road and Sparkling Brook Parkway. The park will have two softball size and two baseball size fields, a two-story scoring tower, restrooms, a regulation basketball court, inclusive playground and picnic shelter.
Town manager Davy Broom said earlier plans put the project at 11 months for completion, but now it looks more like a 14-month job. Groundbreaking should come in the next week or two. Fields should be ready for town rec league or rental use by the spring 2023 season in the worst case scenario, Broom said, but likely will be ready to go by fall 2022.
“With good weather we can anticipate having this open for the fall season next year,” he said.
The property for Banks Athletic Park came when Fort Mill annexed land and approved plans for the 470-acre, up-to-1,300-home Waterside at the Catawba neighborhood in 2013. The park site was donated to the town as a concession in the agreement.
Mayor Guynn Savage said, in years since, she’s sometimes heard from residents in the Waterside or surrounding areas who have built or bought homes, then been surprised to learn the new heavily wooded site will become a park.
“This field has been planned for many years,” Savage said. “It is not a new choice of location.”
A plan for redevelopment
Publicized plans for the park pre-date even the earliest Waterside homes. The park is a key piece to a puzzle that for several years put the town in a quandry. The town knows it will lose its three oldest ballfields.
“This has been made public and shared for years, the intent to move forward with these ballfields that will replace the fields at the current Complex on Tom Hall Street,” Savage said.
There was uncertainty about town recreation after Leroy Springs & Co. announced in 2014 that, after 2020, it would no longer operate the 40-year-old site on Tom Hall. The town was four years into a 10-year lease with Leroy Springs at the time, which allowed use of the recreation site, which had served generations of Fort Mill youth and adults. That complex has three ballfields used for baseball, fast pitch and church league softball and football practice.
On Halloween of 2017 three of the biggest players in Fort Mill announced a deal. Leroy Springs would donate the gym and some surrounding areas, valued at more than $10.3 million, to the town and Fort Mill School District. The school district would build an aquatic center with money from a 2015 bond referendum. Upper Palmetto YMCA would run the gym and pools for their new owners.
Leroy Springs would keep the property where three ballfields remain, for likely redevelopment.
With the deal Leroy Springs leadership said there weren’t specific redevelopment plans, though zoning allows commercial or mixed-use development. An understanding between the company and town since the official ownership change in 2018 has been, the town would be given time to build new fields before it loses the old ones.
“We’re on borrowed time with the ballfields at the Complex,” Savage said just prior to the construction contract vote for Banks Athletic Park. “So the sooner we get started the happier I’ll be.”
Expect some clearing
The most recent renderings of the new park show trees growing through the middle, between two distinct sections of two ballfields. Broom said buffering will grow in time, but area residents will notice the work as the full site will have to be cleared.
“In the long-run you will have a buffer grow up in that area, but I would imagine for construction purposes it will start off being cleared and we’ll add back some vegetation,” he said.
Four fields at Banks Athletic Park will join three somewhat newer fields at Dobys Bridge Park. That site already hosts tournament play along with recreation games. Doubling field capacity could lead to more or larger tournaments. Recreation play routinely uses the Complex fields, which could transition over to Banks Athletic.
This story was originally published March 26, 2021 at 3:47 PM.
