Funding for the $27.4 million facelift for the Cooper Park and Sports Complex came together for the Springfield City Council, which will vote to accept a $13.5 million American Rescue Plan Act funding package from the state of Missouri at its Aug. 21 meeting.
If passed, the grant will be accepted alongside $631,275 from the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), as well as a $5 million appropriation from the city’s general fund carryover balance, which helped ensure the dollar for dollar local match required for state ARPA funds.
Several council members expressed enthusiasm for the funding, the park project and the benefits it could bring to Springfield.
“This is going to be a major draw for a lot of communities to come here to play soccer,” Councilmember Abe McGull said. “I think this is a prudent use of the taxpayer dollars and moving forward in this direction is going to reap huge benefits for this city.”
ARPA funds boosted size and scope of project
Over the past couple of years, the budget for Cooper Park/Lake Country Soccer Complex and the Killian Softball Complex improvements has grown by millions of dollars. With it, the scope of the project grew.
The $5 million appropriation stems from a commitment made by the City Council, at a time when its members were unsure on how the rest of the project — which was, at the time, much smaller — would be funded. Then came along nearly $21 million in ARPA grants to accelerate and expand the plans.
“For that same level of investment we’d committed several years ago, to have received as much external funding as we did for this project and to see the scope it has grown to and the impact it will have on our community is really encouraging,” Councilmember Matthew Simpson said at the meeting Aug. 7.
The City of Springfield received a direct ARPA allocation of $7.3 million for the project and the Springfield-Greene County Park Board appropriated $1 million, bringing the total funding to $27,431,275.
“We need to keep in mind that we keep calling this city ARPA funds or state ARPA funds — this was the federal government, giving almost $21 million to this,” Councilmember Hosmer said. “It was President Biden, and Congress and the United States Senate that passed this to allow the states and allow the city to have these resources for projects that are going to be helpful to a lot of people in this state and also in the country, so I think that’s important to note.”
Project to replace grass fields with turf, add parking, new facilities
The project has been split into two phases as the Park Board looks to meet the ARPA expenditure deadline of Dec. 31, 2026. In the first phase, workers will replace eight grass soccer fields with turf, add a new entry plaza, a picnic and play space, additional bleachers, team locker rooms and field lighting, among other components. The Park Board hopes to bid out the project so construction can start in March 2024.
The second phase will follow about after the first phase. Workers will replace the grass in the baseball and softball fields with turf, relocate the maintenance area, and add new concessions, restroom facilities, a parking lot, tennis courts and pickleball courts.
In all, a total of 19 sports fields will be converted to artificial turf. Cooper Park currently boasts 15 soccer fields, 11 baseball/softball fields, and indoor and outdoor tennis courts, in addition to other outdoor amenities.
The ARPA-funded improvements are in addition to ongoing renovations to the existing tennis complex, in which the Park Board is resurfacing the courts and has added new lighting to the indoor tennis courts.
Improvements will be made to various infrastructure components of the 127-acre park, including new stormwater systems, added sanitary sewer and water service, and sidewalks, stairs, ramps and retaining walls.
Cooper Park project ‘smart economic development’
Springfield Director of Parks and Recreation Bob Belote praised the contributions made by the city, the Park Board, the CVB and the state government for the project, emphasizing the importance of upgrading Cooper Park.
“This is transformational,” Belote told city council members. “Most of our things at Cooper Park date back to Gov. [John] Ashcroft, back in the ‘80s, when Cooper was developed from ‘84 to ‘87 and a lot of this is existing infrastructure that we’re going to have the chance to upgrade, modernize and make state of the art for our own families.”
Jenny Fillmer Edwards, the public information administrator for the Park Board, said that they are motivated to do the project both to provide Springfield athletes with weather-resilient, high-quality fields “at home,” and to spur sports tourism by bringing in tournaments and visitors from other communities who will ultimately put money into the Springfield economy.
Belote acknowledged that sports tourism was a big piece of it, but underscored the value of the project for Springfield residents.
“We talk a lot about sports tourism, and that’s a phenomenal thing, but I want to remind everybody first and foremost this is for our own kids and our own families,” Belote told council members.
Hosmer mirrored Edwards comments in voicing his support for the project at the meeting.
“I think this is going to be a great economic development project because I think it’s a broad based economic development that’s going to help restaurants, hotels, motels, short-term rentals — I’m not a big fan of short-term rentals, but it’s going to help them — retail stores all over the city of Springfield,” he said. “I think this is smart economic development. It’s property that the city owns and we’re investing in what the citizens of the city of Springfield owns so I think it makes a lot of sense.”
Councilmember Brandon Jenson emphasized the importance of the project, and said it was a “good use of a majority of resources that are one time [dollars],” but stressed the need for the city to identify a long-term funding solution for maintaining Park Board properties.
