Construction will begin on sportsplex

FLORENCE – City council members voted unanimously Tuesday to begin construction on the $9.5 million sportsplex.

The council awarded the winning bid to B.H. Construction Co. Inc from Florence.

Mayor Bobby Irons said he expected construction crews in the next two weeks to start moving dirt at the Savannah Highway and Gunwaleford Road site in southwest Florence.

Councilwoman Angie Pickens said she planned on going to the site once or twice a week to make a scrapbook of the sportsplex construction.

“I totally feel like our youth and anybody involved in parks and recreation is a winner tonight,” she said. She even jokingly offered to help out with the construction.

Mayor Bobby Irons said the nine-month first phase construction would benefit from this summer’s growing season. “So next year we will be ready to start playing activities.”

The project has been years in the making.

“It was just a struggle trying to bring all the factions, all the pieces together,” Irons said.

In May 2002, the original 60-acre sportsplex site was to be off Helton Drive near the Florence-Lauderdale Industrial Park.

In the summer of 2004, a cost assessment showed that the development of the sportsplex might be less expensive on the Frost Industrial Park site, which the city bought in 1999.

The city then swapped Frost Park to the north of Gunwalefod Road for the 186 acres of land to the south where the sportsplex will be located.

The vote for the sportsplex was unanimous, a surprise from two weeks ago when council member Sam Pendleton said, “Smooth the land out and let someone else build it.”

He said he dropped his opposition, however, and voted yes after he saw the final plan approved by the parks and recreation committee that included the number of fields, paved parking lots, concession stands and soccer fields. “These items should be in phase one,” he said.

The first phase of the sportsplex will include: