Last September Decatur’s commission approved spending $19,000 for improvements on athletic fields at the old United Methodist Children’s Home. The idea was to provide higher quality sod, irrigation and new fencing for the roughly two acres in late spring.
But that plan has been ditched for now.
One reason may stem from the unofficial results of the Feb. 11 public input workshop, the first of four to help determine potential uses for the UMCH property. The city hasn’t released any data. But an informal study of suggestions posted show considerable support for a track and field site in property’s middle section.
“There’s definitely a lot of buzz about a track,” Deputy City Manager Hugh Saxon said this week. “We need to wait and see what [emerges from] the master plan before we do any work on those fields. If we fix those fields, and the master plan calls for a track, we’d have to completely redo them and we would’ve thrown our money away.”
The city will regularly maintain the fields for youth soccer leagues and Decatur High School’s Ultimate Frisbee team, but for now that’s all. Officials hope to have a final draft of the site’s master plan in late summer, early fall.
