New ball fields, splash pad among highlights of Little League upgrades

Keon Johnson, who plays baseball at Vine-Ingle Little League, will join hundreds of others on new ball fields next year.

But of the $2.6 million in improvements coming to Freedom Park, one addition in particular has already caught the 9-year-old’s attention: A new water feature will offer the chance to cool off after games.

“I’m surprised they’re having a splash pad,” he said after a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday.

In about nine months, the Roff Avenue park will look completely different when one phase of a major construction project is scheduled to be finished.

A new four-field complex with a “wagon-wheel” design will be built. A splash pad is being put in, and the swimming pool that’s been closed for years is being removed. There will also be a new two-story concession stand and restrooms, and parking will be reconfigured.

The nearby Morgan Drive will also be rerouted to run along the outside of the new fields instead of going through the middle of the complex.

Vine-Ingle Little League has about 400 boys ages 4 to 12, and about 350 girls ages 4 to 16 play softball. The Little League, which started in 1954, is the second oldest in Macon. It moved to its current location in 1972, league President Rad Massey said.

The Freedom Park softball league became a part of the Little League last year.

“Now we’re one league — softball and baseball — and we will have a brand-new facility to play in for all the kids,” Massey said. “I grew up around here, so to see these changes is amazing.”

The Freedom Park project is being paid for with 2012 special purpose sales tax proceeds. A future phase will include upgrades to another ball-field complex.

Freedom Park also received a new boxing center in 2014.

“This new special purpose local option sales tax that has been passed gives us the ability to do in two phases what we’ve tried to do here at Vine-Ingle for the longest time: make a first-class Little League field and softball field so that our young men and women are able to have excellent facilities,” Macon-Bibb County Mayor Robert Reichert said.

The Freedom Park improvements are among a series of recent changes to the baseball landscape in the county.

Plans are being designed for renovations to Luther Williams Field, where a summer collegiate baseball team is expected to begin playing in 2018.

A new $1.5 million multipurpose field is being built at Hartley Elementary School through funds provided by Macon-Bibb and the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation.

And last year East Macon Park, now Delores A. Brooks Park, reopened after upgrades were made to its ball fields, and that’s led to an increase in participation there, the mayor said.

“Baseball really is coming back in a big way in this community,” he said.

This story was originally published June 28, 2017 at 12:24 PM with the headline "New ball fields, splash pad among highlights of Little League upgrades."