- April 19, 2024
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Palm Coast Little League would like more fields for its softball and baseball players. The city government is considering giving them more — but that would mean converting soccer fields into softball fields, which might lead the soccer tournament leagues that use those fields to find other venues, costing the city money.
The baseball and softball players are currently divided between four fields. It’s not enough for the hundreds of players in the local Little League, Palm Coast Little League president William Warren told Palm Coast City Council members at a council workshop July 30.
But if the city adds fields for softball and baseball, that might attract enough softball and baseball tournaments to offset the soccer tournament loss, he said.
“With six fields available, you could hold a lot of other tournaments,” Warren said. “It also allows us to host summer Little League tournaments.”
Lauren Johnston, the city’s interim Parks and Recreation manager, presented options to the council at the workshop. (Two of its members, Mayor Milissa Holland and Councilman Jack Howell, were absent from the meeting.)
She was joined by Heidi Petito, the general services manager for the Flagler County government.
The city currently has 10 fields that can be used for soccer tournaments, Johnston said.
It could, ultimately, convert three of those to softball fields and one to a baseball field. But that conversion, Johnston said, would best be done in phases, starting with two softball fields and two T-ball fields — one of which would later become a softball field, and one of which would become a baseball field.
The potential problem is those travel soccer tournaments, which generate millions of dollars in local financial impact annually. There are 10 planned through winter 2020, and converting the fields would impact six of them, Johnston said.
The city could work with the county to offer alternative play space at county facilities, but the tournaments typically are seeking 10 fields that are contiguous, and may simply relocate elsewhere.
But then, Johnston said, they might also be replaced by softball or baseball tournaments.
Councilman Eddie Branquinho asked if adding lighting to fields that currently don’t have it would increase the capacity for tournament play.
Johnston replied that it could, and that Palm Coast Park and Holland Park would be the best ones to consider lighting first.
In other business at the workshop, Johnston told council members that city staff is recommending that the council do away with the citizen Leisure Services Advisory Committee, which has not had a meeting since September 2018 and is a perpetually short of enough members for a quorum.
Johnston suggested that the city, in its place, create a nonprofit parks and recreation foundation.
