To Sunshine Ballpark Foundation board member Seth Silber, the overlapping grid lines displayed on a screen at Tuesday’s city council work session represent myriad recreational possibilities.
Silber unveiled plans for a third, multipurpose field at Sunshine Ballpark, which he said would accommodate every sport from cricket to lacrosse.
“I would really expect this thing to be used from morning until late at night,” Silber said.
The new field would be constructed in a long-vacant tract just beyond the 60-foot youth baseball diamond and a disability-friendly facility utilized by the Sunshine and Ability Baseball Leagues.
The total cost of the project, which would include artificial turf, lighting and infrastructure costs, is projected to range from $3.5 million-$4 million, Silber said.
The Sunshine Baseball Foundation can’t finance the project on its own, so Silber proposed a model based on the city’s arrangement with the FredNats stadium — with the important caveat that the city owns the land at Sunshine.
Private funding would comprise about 10% of the cost, while the city’s share would be 90%, paid out over a 20-30 year period as part of a financing plan. That would equate to somewhere between $200,000 to $300,000 per year, Silber said.
Silber also noted that Fredericksburg City Schools Superintendent Marci Catlett sits on Sunshine’s board, and the hope is for James Monroe High School teams to utilize the new field for games and practices. Maury Stadium, where the Yellow Jackets play their home games, features a grass playing surface.
Sunshine Ballpark Foundation chair Jeff Rouse added that the field could help to replace the baseball field that will be displaced by the construction of the city’s third fire station, off Fall Hill Avenue.
“A multi-use field is the right field to go in there, if we can collectively afford it,” Rouse said. “We need to think outside-the-box here from a funding perspective and partner with the city on this.”
For his part, Ward 1 city councilor Matt Rowe noted that the city’s burgeoning south Asian population — one in seven FCPS students speaks a south Asian language — would be served by the inclusion of cricket lines and oval on a multipurpose field.
“This would be a real asset to the city if we could get that done,” Rowe said.
Seth Silber is the board co-chair of the Fredericksburg Free Press. Board members do not influence newsroom operations.
