City asked to aid upgrade at Simplot Millennium Park

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This article was published 19/12/2017 (2978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Simplot Millennium Park is in need of some major upgrades, and its volunteer board is hoping the City of Brandon will step up with funding.

The park was officially opened in August 2001 — a millennium gift to the community, initiated by Simplot Canada. After nearly 17 years in operation, it is showing its age.

“We’ve been really operating on a break-even standpoint for several years,” said Simplot Millennium Park board member Bruce Luebke. “That has meant that we haven’t been able to really do a lot of capital projects with the park. And because it’s getting to be 17 years old, there are a number of things that need to be done in order to get it back to the original way it was, and to continue to host the kind of events that we want to host there.”

Luebke made a presentation to city council on Monday, during which he explained that the group plans to request capital funding through the city’s Accommodation Tax Fund for upgrades to the park, necessary to host Baseball Canada’s 2018 U13 Western Canadian Championship next August.

“We would like to get some support from the City of Brandon, whether that be financially or some gift in-kind services which can help ease our financial burden,” Luebke said.

Located at the corner of Richmond Avenue East and Highway 110, the park’s most immediate needs involve work on the two peewee baseball diamonds. Sod infields need to be replaced, and the outfields need to be fixed up as well.

“One thing that baseball Canada pointed out when they visited the site, was that we need to have better enclosure of both the dugout and bullpen areas, so we’re looking at adding some fencing to accomplish that,” Luebke said.

The group is looking at overall, operational maintenance as well, such as fence repair, safety netting, etc.

“I think all the outfields on all the diamonds are in need of some TLC,” he said.

Ideally, they would like to see equipment replaced or upgraded, as well as materials to bring the level of the diamonds up.

“What we’re finding is that as they’ve worn down. We’re getting a lot of rocks that are coming through the infield particularly, on a lot of the diamonds,” he said. “That was the kind of ground it was built on … rocky, gravelly terrain.”

They plan to get a few more estimates before submitting a request to the Accommodation Tax Fund. Preliminary numbers suggest a capital request of $100,000.

Another idea the group presented, was finding a way to eliminate or reduce property taxes on the facility, which could put $7,000 per year back into the park.

The park is home to Brandon Minor Baseball, Westman Youth Football and Westman Orthodox Softball. During the summer season, it provides recreational space for some 700 youth and 300 to 400 adults on a weekly basis, according to Luebke.

“I think that has some value to the city of Brandon, and I’d like to see them do more to support that aspect,” he said.

Following the presentation, Coun. John LoRegio (Meadows-Waverly) put forward a motion to look into developing a memorandum of understanding between the city and Simplot Millennium Park board, to get the conversation going.

“There’s literally hundreds, if not thousands of kids using that facility, and since I’ve been on council we’ve been talking about building a soccer field and we’re still at the planning stage,” he said. “So if we were to not have this facility, who knows where these kids would be playing ball and football.”

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