During an Aug. 30 meeting, Blake Coleman with TBG Partners, the consultant designing the park, showed updated schematics for the park to the 4B board, a group of residents responsible for allocating sales tax revenue to amateur athletic facilities.
“A lot has gone on behind the scenes in regards to different parts of the plan moving forward,” Coleman said.
Bay Colony Park, which will be located west of Calder Road and south of Ervin Street, will feature five baseball fields and four softball fields, which is a direct answer to the ongoing problem the city has faced where families have noted there are too few such fields in the city. In addition, the park will have soccer fields, pickleball courts, concession stands, a pavilion, playgrounds and other amenities.
The park will include a perimeter loop for cars to drive around the five baseball fields and drop off players. The dropoff points will have shoulders for vehicles to move off the main loop and not slow down traffic, Coleman said.
The loop is also adjacent to two parking areas in the middle of the park for families spending the day at the park, Coleman said.
Additionally, there will be an overflow parking lot on the east side of the park for particularly busy days. In total, the park has about the same number of parking spaces as the Chester L. Davis Sportsplex, League City’s other athletic facility, Coleman said.
The overflow lot is an add alternate, meaning League City City Council may choose to nix it when approving the final design, he said.
The park includes 10 such add alternates. After the city receives a construction bid for the project, City Council may choose to keep some and remove others due to cost. Any add alternates removed will end up as green space instead, Parks Director Chien Wei said.
The park also will include a single pedestrian walk that crosses the vehicle loop at only one spot. The path would allow visitors to walk from the playgrounds and soccer fields to the south to the baseball and softball fields to the north and would also connect to a playground, an open lawn and other points of interest, Coleman said.
TBG Partners is a bit limited when it comes to park design. The 109-acre plot where Bay Colony Park will be built includes an underground pipeline, an energy corridor, right-of-way for the future site of the Grand Parkway and wetlands, Coleman said.
Due to these restraints, TBG Partners proposed building the pedestrian walk along the pipeline because no vertical structures can be built there, he said.
The softball complex will include in the middle a pavilion raised 4 feet to allow spectators better views of the players. The complex will also feature terraced seat walls and shaded areas, Coleman said.
Finally, Coleman said the plan now also includes a tie-in to Calder Road. TBG Partners worked with city officials to secure that alignment, which will allow vehicles on Calder Road to enter the park without having to first enter Ervin Street.
Coleman will return before the 4B board in late October at the earliest to discuss more design. The park project will go to bid in the latter half of 2023 and will break ground in 2024.
