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Medford OKs $5.7 million bond sales for sports park By MELISSA MARTIN Mail Tribune Believing that if they build it, players will come, the Medford City Council on Thursday approved $5.7 million in bond sales to build a field of dreams. The city will purchase 132 acres near the old Starlight Drive-In Theater on Highway 99 for a sports park with baseball, softball and soccer fields. "This is the last major parcel in the city along Bear Creek," said Greg Jones, Medford Parks and Recreation director. "This is the opportunity to maintain open space along the creek and provide for a sports facility." The city will sell bonds in May to provide the final payment of $4.4 million for the Heitkamp farm. The city already made a $200,000 option payment to property owners Martin Heitkamp and his sister Rose Marie Leever, both of Jacksonville. The city will make another $200,000 option payment this spring and the final payment in November. The Heitkamp siblings said they are glad to have a sports park on pasture land their parents, Gertrude and Martin Heitkamp, purchased in 1945 for a dairy and hay farm. "My parents would be very pleased," said Leever, an Oak Grove Elementary School secretary for 35 years. "I've worked with children all my life, so I couldn't be more pleased." The cost per acre is about $39,000 for the creek-frontage property situated near Belknap Road between Interstate 5 and Highway 99. "That's very inexpensive," said Councilwoman Claudette Moore, a Medford real estate agent. "To find an acre of property in town for $40,000 is impossible." The city will use the most of the remaining $1.3 million from the sale of the bonds to begin construction on the fields that will be used for American Legion, Babe Ruth, Little League, city softball and Rogue Valley Soccer Club games for youths and adults. The sports park will also include two miles of bike paths - the stretch of the Bear Creek Greenway between Barnett Road to South Stage Road. City officials say the park will provide opportunities both for children and for tourism-related businesses. "If you look at the sports park from a tourism point of view, it's another pro/am bowling tournament," Moore said, referring to a recent successful professional bowling tournament held in Medford. "Aesthetically, it will be beautiful and offer more things for our kids to do. If kids are into sports, they are usually not into drugs." The city will repay the bonds using recent increases in the business license fees and hotel/motel tax. The hotel/motel tax was approved by voters in 2000. The fee hikes will generate $520,000 annually, enough to pay the $450,000 annual debt service, with $70,000 a year reserved for developing the sports park, said Larry Bryant, city finance director. The city will sell the 20-year bonds at an estimated 4.94 percent rate, paying about $9 million in principal and interest over the life of the bonds, Bryant said The sports park will be larger than Bear Creek Park, which has 110 acres, but will be dwarfed by the 1,780-acre Prescott Park on Roxy Anne Peak, Jones said. The city's newest park land is the donated 165-acre Whittle property near Cherry Lane in the North Phoenix Road/Hillcrest area. Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.