If Vicksburg and Warren County are going to get a new multipurpose recreation complex it will take a major community effort to get city and county officials moving forward to develop a plan, members of Vicksburg’s ad hoc recreation committee were told Thursday.
“It’s going to take the whole community to get on board and get it built,” Casey Fisher told committee members at a public meeting on recreation at Warren Central High School. “You’re going to have to sell the plan. If you don’t sell it, nobody’s going to buy it.”
Thursday’s meeting was the final of three public meetings held at WCHS by the committee to hear the public’s concerns and suggestions on recreation. The committee meets Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the City Hall Annex to discuss the results of the meetings. The committee meeting is open to the public.
“We’ve learned three things so far in these meetings,” committee chairman Omar Nelson said. “The people want to keep the neighborhood parks, everybody believes we need to build a sports complex, and they want this to be a city/county project, and when we reach the end of this process and present our report we want the city and county (officials) to get together and develop it like we want it.”
Once again the committee members and the 14 people attending the meeting, said pressure needs to be put on the city and county to get together for a countywide facility.
Nelson said the biggest problem is getting city and county officials together to resolve their differences and work toward developing recreation. He said the committee has a Facebook page and a site on change.org with a petition and encouraging people to email Mayor George Flaggs Jr., Aldermen Michael Mayfield and Willis Thompson, and the Board of Supervisors telling them the public wants a new recreation complex. So far, he said, 270 emails have been sent to the officials.
“And I know they’re getting them, because they’re calling me about them,” he said.
“I believe for the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and the Board of Supervisors, the issue is ‘how do we go about funding it?’ It would be good for the city and county to get together and find a place where this complex can be built,” he said.
When the committee was appointed by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, it was given until Dec. 31 to present a report on the city’s recreation programs and facilities.
That report, Nelson said, will include plans for a 200-acre multipurpose recreation complex that includes adult and junior baseball and softball fields, soccer fields, tennis courts, walking and bicycle trails, playground and picnic areas, and an enclosed multipurpose facility with classrooms that can be used for multiple activities.
“The plan we’re going to offer is the ‘grand plan,’ and they can take from it what they want,” he said. “If we want to be the big city, we’ve got to present the big plan.”
He said the report would not recommend possible sites for the complex.
“We are not looking for sites,” he said. “That will be the for the board to decide.”
The plans brought a concern from Ernest Galloway, one of the organizers of the Fuzzy Johnson Baseball League, who asked about participation by underprivileged children.
“These are kids who can’t play on the tournament teams because they can’t afford it,” he said. “They won’t be able to take advantage of this complex.”
Nelson said plans are to develop programs that will allow all children and adults to use the complex. “I want to make sure everybody in the community has the opportunity to use the facility,” he said. “If they don’t play sports, there will be something there for them.”
“I’m sick of driving on the Interstate and looking out and seeing what other cities have, and wondering why we can’t have something like that. We deserve it.” Fisher said. “I keep hearing about how much potential Vicksburg has. Even people who don’t live in Vicksburg talk about Vicksburg.
“We just need to build it,” he said.
The committee was appointed in May by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to examine the city’s recreation programs and present recommendations to improve the overall program over the next five years by Dec. 31.
The committee first met on June 5, and began discussions that indicated a move toward a multipurpose recreation complex, marking the third time a recreation complex for the city has been discussed.
In 2003, the city bought the 200-acre Fisher Ferry Road property near St. Michael Catholic Church for a sports complex for $325,000. The project was abandoned in 2009 after an additional $2.7 million had been spent for preliminary plans, engineering and dirt work. The city has spent $55,343 since August 2012 to replace the concrete in the drainage chutes on the site with riprap and grout under a Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality mandate.
The board in March put the property up for sale for a 90-day period, but there was no response.
Efforts to remake Halls Ferry Park into a $25 million sportsplex fell apart when the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality frowned on the project’s suitability because, as known throughout the process, part of the park was built on what was once the city’s landfill. Separate pieces of land in south Warren County totaling 145 acres owned by the Aquila Group, which had proposed to build and manage the fields and sports facilities, went to tax sale Aug. 26.
Former mayor Paul Winfield in 2012 promoted an estimated $20 million sports complex funded by a half-cent sales tax. Flaggs, who was a state legislator at the time and had a hand in bringing a potential tax increase to a vote, opposed the project because there were too many uncertainties with the project. The project died when the chairman of the House Local and Private Committee refused to introduce the bill.