The Wald Park renovation project is rounding third and heading home.
Nearly two years after the project broke ground to bring youth baseball, softball and soccer back to the downtown area, the finish is near. Wald Park board member Craig Miller said the project is about 90 percent finished with just some cosmetic work left to putting finishing touches on the fields, parking lots and landscaping, expecting to finalize work over the next two months.
The grand opening date for games is set for August 25 with hopes to have teams practicing there by late July.
“We’re considering having fall baseball leagues, depending on everything as planned, as well as tournaments for little league and knothole tournaments,” Miller said.
In addition, Wald Park will serve as the home for St. Patrick athletics, starting with soccer in the fall.
Upon completion, the only matter left will be lighting for the fields, part of phase II of the contruction process.
“That’s a separate fundraising effort,” Miller said, expecting costs of that around $200,000 to complete.
Other matters included the hiring of LaMont Taylor as a supervisor of the park who will oversee day-to-day operations upon park’s opening.
Wald Park, located on Lexington Street near the intersection of Kentucky 11 has been pretty much idle for nearly eight years. The park, originally named Limestone Park before being renamed Wald Park around 1950, served the youth of the community for decades until July of 2000 when the property fell into a state of decline with weeds overtaking the field, leaving no place for children to play baseball, unless they had transportation to the new Tom Browning Boys and Girls Club, which had recently located to Maple Leaf Road, or the Maysville-Mason County Recreation Park. In June 2001, under the stewardship of the late Keith Carver and his friend, Jim Sanders, parents and their children who were playing Little League cleaned up the park and knothole and softball returned to the field. Then in 2010, major flooding damaged the fields, buildings and equipment at the park and again, the lights were darkened and play ceased outside of the Keith Carver Memorial Tournament.
In July 2014, the property was purchased through private funds and a portion of the purchase price donated by the prior owners, Jones and Verville LLC, in memory of the late Ruby D. Jones and Robert J. Verville.
The initial intention of the reopening was to have the field used exclusively for St. Patrick events. That philosophy changed as meetings were held, and it was decided to create a park complex that would complement the community as a whole and provide an athletic facility that would be available for community use as well as for St. Patrick.
“We’re excited to bring back decades upon decades of what happened in the past. Baseball was played there a long time and not just Mason County, having support from the entire region and businesses from multiple counites in and outside of the state,” Miller said.
Miller added the baseball league will be Northern Kentucky Cal Ripken including Mason, Robertson, Pendleton and Bracken counties.
*Prior articles from Marla Toncray contributed to the report.
Leave a Reply