If all goes well, the new Rotary Athletic Park of Olds should be virtually complete by the end of August, according to Scott Chant, the town's director of operations.
The park, located along 70th Avenue, just north of the Cornerstone shopping development, will contain soccer pitches, baseball and softball diamonds as well as 10 horseshoe pitches to replace the ones eliminated from Centennial Park.
Construction on the project began last year. At that time, its estimated cost was approximately $3.6 million.
"Hopefully by the end of August you'll see quite a transformation of that place out there," Chant said during an interview with the Albertan last week. "All the major components are in. It's all the finishing up, like all the landscaping, and planting grass.
"They're putting in fences right now — the ball diamond fences and things like that. That's probably the only last major thing to be put in is all the fences for the ball diamonds."
But don't expect to be playing on those fields this fall. Chant says the area won't be open to the public until next spring.
Wet weather earlier this year slowed things up.
Chant outlined progress on the facility as of last week.
The south soccer field is now fully sodded and being watered. Approval was also given to begin doing fine tuning of the north pitch and to start laying sod on it.
"Sod's fairly time-consuming to lay down. But they've got irrigation sprinklers to put in on the full ball diamonds and then once they're in and (they) get the fine grading (done) they'll sod those."
Chant said each of the ball diamonds has bleachers, backstops, dugouts and benches. There'll also be a batting cage.
Lots of trees and bushes have also been planted throughout the area.
"They've been planting those quite diligently over the last week," Chant said.
When completed, the park will contain 2.4 kilometres of trails. As of last week, about half had been paved.
"They didn't pave the rest because there was heavy equipment still working on a couple of the baseball diamonds," Chant said.
The park will also feature washrooms and a big parking lot that Chant said will be about the size of the Walmart parking lot.
"(There'll be) lots of parking. So parking on the roads should not be an issue. The parking lot is fairly large. That would accommodate every field being full: soccer, baseball, everything," Chant said.
"If there was a tournament there and every field was being played on, there would be enough parking to accommodate everybody."
Once the park is completed and operational, Chant said the best approach to it will likely be along 70th Avenue. However, people will also be able to get there from 67A Avenue, just north of the Cornerstone shopping development.
