Rocket Ball Park renovation efforts continue
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At one time considered a popular spot for the local baseball team known as the McMinnville Rockets, the Cope Street park has been underutilized for a long time. Local officials and members of an advocacy group are hoping to change that, however, after city officials allocated $10,000 in improvements over the past two years.
Employees from a variety of city departments have combined their efforts and made a number of improvements, including building new rest rooms, adding heat and air to an old storage building, removing the old inside bathrooms, creating separate meeting and kitchen rooms, painting and adding sheet rock to the ceiling and walls, adding new light fixtures, resurfacing a multi-purpose court and adding a new water line for the new rest rooms.
According to Wayne Wolford of youth mentoring group Young Men United, which has championed the cause for restoration over the past several years along with private citizens familiar with the park’s history, the park was built in the 1950s for the Rockets.
It was a hub of the community at one time, but when the neighborhood broke up after urban renewal, baseball fell to softball and people simply stopped going there, he said. Young Men United not only wanted to preserve the park from a historical aspect, but wanted to create a better meeting space for the organization.
Some of their requests are finally being answered.
“We’ve been going back and forth with it, but we’re determined,” Wolford said of having an improved park. “We want to make that place a place that is accessible and make it our home to where we can kind of work out of it. We have the field where we can have activities and events and we want to have the building where we can meet and have functions and so forth.”
Parks and Recreation Director Carlene Brown added the numbers of groups looking for somewhere to practice ball have increased significantly, with the Civic Center taking 40 calls a week from such during the last ball season.
“A lot of interest is being shown in that park besides the neighbors who live in that vicinity,” she said. “With requests coming in from different groups, we knew it would make a lot of sense if we took the time to do some renovation down there, so that’s what really started it. Our aldermen decided that they would allocate a little bit of money over a period of years to make some gradual improvements.”
A lack of accessible public rest rooms and other facilities has made large gatherings there less than ideal, but with new rest rooms, hopefully, new crowds will breathe life into the park once again.
“A lot of people didn’t seem to know it was there,” Brown said. “People would call up here and want to know if there was any field they could practice on. I would tell them they could go to Rocket Ball Park. The No. 1 problem was it didn’t have rest room facilities and I believe that’s going to be the most appreciated thing that’s there.”
In the future, building a sidewalk around the building, improving landscaping, improving the entrance road and adding an outfield fence and additional bleachers are considerations, along with improvements that could come along with the construction of a second phase of the Barren Fork Greenway, which ends at the park.
“There’s always the request for lights,” Brown added. “It’s a major request, but it would be a nice thing to have. I also think with the increased activity that is going to come there if we get phase two of the greenway, a picnic shelter for groups of 60 to 100 would be a real nice addition to that park area.”
Brown expected the majority of currently planned renovations to be done this spring.
“It is our goal to be 100 percent finished with what we can do now before the grass starts growing again. We cannot let spring get here and not be finished.”
For Wolford and others eager to see an improved park, the project can’t move fast enough.
“Our hopes are to see the park preserved,” he said. “It’s historical in a sense for us,” he added, noting several changes over the years. “It’s an altogether different thing and seeing those changes over the years, I’m proud of those changes. We just hope we can get our goal accomplished.”