Hot Springs Futbol League teams are shown in action during a game at Linden Park in 2018. – File photo by The Sentinel-Record
The city wants to convert Kimery Park’s soccer fields into parking and make Linden Park the new soccer hub, but a city director said there’s a groundswell of support to keep soccer where it is.
District 4 Director Dudley Webb made his pitch for soccer improvements at Kimery during the Hot Springs Board of Directors’ Tuesday work session.
“I would not only recommend we continue the soccer tradition at Kimery, but also make appropriations to place soccer lights at Kimery,” he told the board.
Webb cited Kimery’s central location and proximity to Hot Springs World Class High School, explaining that many of its students are part of a league that plays at Kimery. He said an online petition to keep soccer there has garnered close to 1,000 signatures.
Mayor Pat McCabe interjected, telling Webb he should hold his comments for the board’s bimonthly business meetings.
“We appreciate your comments, but we’re not making decisions tonight,” McCabe said. “Those comments are best made at the time we’re going to make decisions versus us receiving input on what the options are.”
Tuesday’s meeting was convened to review recommendations from the committee City Manager Bill Burrough formed last year to prioritize more than $40 million in unfunded capital needs. Lights and turf at Kimery were among the dozen projects Burrough removed from the draft list he presented the 2021-22 board last summer. They weren’t included in the prioritized list presented Tuesday.
“It’s so busy at Kimery,” Burrough told the board.
“They’re parking anywhere they can find a grassy spot. They’re usually lined all the way down until they get to Leonard Street. That’s one of my concerns about continuing to invest in Kimery.
“We need parking at Kimery. Staff’s recommendation would be take that area and turn it into parking.”
He said keeping grass on the soccer fields has proven difficult. The more than $400,000 bid the city received to resod them in 2019 was cost prohibitive, leading the city to use a mix of sand and compost to try to level the ground and promote grass growth.
“There’s so much play on that field that you can’t keep it up,” Burrough told the board. “The under structure of those fields is settling, and that’s one of the issues they had with holding water. But we have looked at how we could come back in and put a different type of base down and totally regrow the field. You’d still be looking at well over a half-million dollars to do that.”
Burrough said he’d recommend converting the grass fields to turf if the board decides to keep soccer at Kimery. The estimate he presented Tuesday was close to $900,000.
“If we keep soccer at Kimery, we really need to make that a turf field,” he said. “Some may not want to play on that, but we’re never going to be able to keep grass at Kimery. We’ve tried it for two decades. For whatever reason, we can’t keep grass on those.”
The ranking committee rated lights at Linden Park fifth on the list of 18 projects the board reviewed Tuesday. Soccer turf at the Whittington Avenue park ranked last. Estimates presented Tuesday showed a $751,250 cost for turf and $289,310 cost for lights.
Burrough told the board Linden Park has room for an additional regulation-sized field and several youth fields.
“We’d have to do a little bit of work on parking on the south end of that,” he said. “It’s an underused park. We’ve got brand new bathrooms there. We’re building a brand new playground this year. Some people think it’s unsafe, but I can tell you one of the safest places in the city is Whittington Avenue.”
Webb said Kimery wouldn’t require an expansion of its soccer footprint and seized on Burrough’s comments about the frequency of play as proof of public support for keeping soccer where it is.
“That’s a testament to the point I’m making here tonight,” he said. “We’ve got an active soccer field. We do have a league that plays there. That’s a league of over 200-plus players.”
