Groundbreaking for the Heritage Point Park soccer complex will take place Friday, Feb. 25, at 3:30 p.m.
“You’ll just park in the Park Creek School parking lot,” said City Administrator Andrew Parker.
Parker briefed members of the Dalton Finance Committee on the project Thursday. The Finance Committee is made up of the City Council members.
“The (timber) clearing has been completed,” Parker said. “The erosion control has been put into place. The contractor is making great progress. The project is on track, and we expect it will be complete by mid-summer, and we can start hosting events in late summer and fall.”
The city of Dalton is using about $7.075 million of its share of the four-year, $66 million Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) approved by county voters in 2020 to build two FIFA-size soccer fields at Heritage Point Park. FIFA is an international governing body for soccer. The SPLOST is a 1% sales tax on most goods sold in the county.
“We are under contract with Northwest Georgia Paving and Advanced Sports Group to perform that work,” Parker said.
At their Jan. 17 meeting the City Council members approved a $20,000 change order to the project. The fields were originally laid out only as large fields. The change order calls for also sewing in striping for two youth fields on each field.
Parker said members of the local cricket community have approached the city about using the fields. Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 that is popular in many parts of the world including the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and southern Africa.
Cricket is played regularly on a privately-owned athletic field at a 21.8-acre site at Varnell Road in Varnell.
The fields at Heritage Point Park are two of four FIFA-size fields now under construction in the Greater Dalton area.
Whitfield County officials said they expect to receive the turf for a field under construction at Riverbend Park later this month or in early March. They said the county is still on track for an April 8 grand opening of Riverbend Park, which is being built on 75 acres of land off Collins Road near Southeast Whitfield High School. The $13 million park is funded by the county’s share of the 2020 SPLOST.
The park will also have four baseball/softball fields and a 30,000-square-feet gym/community center with two basketball courts, two meeting rooms, a walking track, staff office space, team dressing rooms and a covered pavilion on the back side of the building.
The grand opening will feature a softball game between the USA Patriots and local firefighters and law enforcement officers. According to the group’s website (usapatriotsathletics.org), “the USA Patriots, formerly known as the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team, is a nonprofit … whose mission is to bring athletic and veteran amputees together to promote the benefits of inclusive sport and therapeutic recreational activities.”
The fourth FIFA-size soccer field will be at Dalton Stadium, which is under construction on the campus of The Dalton Academy and Dalton Junior High School.
The stadium, which will seat roughly 3,000, will also host football and lacrosse and will serve several schools in the Dalton Public Schools system. The city will reimburse Dalton Public Schools up to $847,164 for the turf as a part of an intergovernmental agreement that will allow the city to use the field when it is not in use by the school system. The stadium is expected to open in late February or early March.
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