MASON CITY – There was a lot of dirt getting moved Tuesday in Mason City.
Early that morning, there was a crew of city workers transporting dirt from Elmwood Cemetery about a mile to Ray Rorick Park. Several large green dump trucks are bringing the clay-like dirt from a excess dirt pile near the Monroe Avenue underpass over to a location just east of Big Blue in the park where up to 8 new soccer fields will be set.
“There will be 2 larger soccer fields,” a city worker explained Tuesday, “2 medium-sized fields and I think 4 smaller fields.”
He said they should be done moving in the dirt over the next few days.
Mason City Recreation Director Brian Pauly explained Tuesday that the actual number of soccer fields hasn’t been determined officially. “Whatever our demand is, that’s what we can do,” Pauly said, saying that some age groups may need more fields, and the field sizes differ with the age groups.
Pauly sees a lot of potential in Ray Rorick Park and that bringing in the dirt is just “phase one.”
“I want to develop a park that is flat and maintained and can offer a range of activities,” Pauley said. “Ray Rorick Park is under-used… it’s a hidden gem. People don’t see the potential there yet. I want to bring that out. The soccer fields along with the ice rink and the skate park will really complete this park.”
The project will all be done in phases and won’t be ready until 2014. “We need to seed it and people will need to stay off it. We’ll be ready to play in 2014.” Pauly said sod is cost-prohibitive so seeding the area will be done instead, to keep costs down.
At the same time, on the southeast side of town at the Georgia Hanford Park, McKiness Excavating was prepping a prairie grass area for a new sledding hill.
Project organizer and “One Man Think Tank” Ozzie Ohl told NIT that “To date about $3,000 has been (donated) and thanks to the very generous support of McKiness Excavating the overall (fundraising) goal has dropped from approximately $20,000 to around $12,000. They are doing the grading for the hill. That is an awesome contribution. Because of that (and the Snow Wonder sledding hill benefit auction) I really feel very confident that come next November there will be a “Chill on the Hill” for kids, parents and grandparents.”
McKiness was just getting started Tuesday, late morning. They had a large grader they were unloading off a flat bed truck. “This will do most of the work,” one McKiness employee said. “We want to beat the weather. We hope to be done in a couple of days.”
The man said no new dirt, to his knowledge, was being brought in. They are just moving existing dirt up the hill in the prairie area to create the sledding hill.
Ohl has said that the new sledding hill will be at least “twice as long” as the East Park sledding hill.
Here’s the sledding hill diagram layout in case you didn’t see it yet:
Sorry! I thought you were going to talk about city government!
At one time they were going to put some camping sites at big blue. This was a great idea I wonder why they changed that plan?
This is good. They could have done this at Highland Golf course so all of the taxpayers could have used it.