Is the city’s Fisher Ferry property the best place to build Vicksburg’s sports complex?

The report by consultants Diamante Global/JCI Holdings LLC appears to say so, but some residents attending Thursday’s meeting to look at the consultant’s report on why the property is the most cost-effective site to build a complex believe the city’s site committee for the complex needs to do more work.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said Friday he’s going to reopen the search. And it will have to be done with care.

Granted, the city owns the Fisher Ferry property outright, and because of preliminary work done in the site it will require less site preparation before building the array of baseball, softball, soccer fields and other facilities. And, the city has already sunk more than $2 million into the site — $3 million if you count the $235,000 purchase price the city paid in 2003.

The site, as several residents pointed out has its problems. One is traffic. Fisher Ferry is a two-lane road which could make entering and leaving a complex built there a hazardous feat if the entrance and exit are not done right.

There is the problem with traffic on Halls Ferry Road, which connects with Fisher Ferry and is presently the main access road to the entrance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center, a sprawling compound that also exits on Halls Ferry. There is the other route to Fisher Ferry off U.S. 61 South using Grange Hall Road. At the present time there is no other access to the property. A planned access road off Dana Road is being considered, and will be in the second part of the city’s capital improvements plan, but there is no date when that second phase will go into effect.

As was also pointed out Thursday, there are some wetlands and floodplain issues at the property’s north end, where Hatcher Bayou forms its northern boundary.

When Flaggs reopened the land search, he delayed site approval for the complex for 60 days and recommended the site committee look at property outside the county along U.S. 61 North and behind the Outlets of Vicksburg. He also gave any interested private developers an opportunity to present a plan.

The mayor’s decision makes sense, although it would have been better had he extended the delay for 90 days.

The site committee has a tough job ahead of it. It has to look at and evaluate some large tracts of land and do it soon. It’s made tougher because Vicksburg and Warren County are not blessed with acres of flat land like Baton Rouge, La., which has several multiuse complexes, or the Coast, where Ocean Springs recently opened a new facility. Our area’s rugged terrain, which was great for Confederate engineers to build defenses against the Yankee onslaught, is not good for building a multiuse sports or recreation complex.

Some of the areas the committee members will look at will require a lot of dirt work before site preparation can begin to layout the ball fields and multiuse building. The consultants made a point of what it could cost, when they said it would cost $3.4 million to do dirt work to prepare the Mississippi Bluffs property for work — a big chunk out of the project’s $20 million total budget.

A project as important as this is to the city’s future needs to be thoroughly researched and thought out, and the site committee and city officials need to examine all the angles. When they look at other tracts of land, site committee members need to keep in mind not just location but the cost of buying the land and getting it ready to build the maze of ball fields and other facilities that will go on the site.

In the long run, it may be that the Fisher Ferry site is indeed the best, most cost-effective site to build a complex, but we need to examine other alternatives before reaching a decision. Once that decision is reached, it will need everyone’s support.