The experience of the Atlanta Sports Complex, with its new paved parking, is impressive-especially on a busy ballgame night as occurred last week when the girls' softball association held its opening field day.
Field day is always a popular event. Distant cousins join grandparents and all to watch the little ones play.
But after an almost $600,000 parking and access improvement project by the city and the baseball and softball associations, an incidental problem still remains.
On busy game nights, there's still not enough parking. Or, to be more accurate, there's not enough parking close by the particular fields.
During field day Saturday, fans starting parking along and off the paved roadway, the way they had to do seasons before.
All the striped parking spots were filled. At least, those close to the girls' fields.
Atlanta police were at first searching for car owners and then giving parking ticket warnings.
The difficulty at the moment is educating the public that only striped parkings spot are to be used. There were plenty of spaces in which to park Saturday, but these were well away from the girls' fields and involved a walk.
Fortunately, walking on this paved park is easy and pleasant as well.
"Marvelous. We really look first class now," Don Rich, a parent of Atlanta High School baseball player Carson Rich, said of the new parking.
Atlanta High School has its boys' and girls' ball fields at the park, as well.
More than 200 cars were in the parking lots on the softball opening field day. Three hundred parking spaces are available throughout.
The parking area is also colorful with gleaming aluminum siding, detailed speed safety bumps, reflective markers on posts, safety crossings and plenty of fresh signage.
"Before, you could knock your car out of alignment coming in here,'' Rich said. "It was as if nobody cared, and people parked everywhere, even blocking you by pulling up behind and ahead of you, three cars in a row."
City Manger David Cockerell said the city is exceptionally satisfied with the way the park work turned out.
"The outside work is complete, and now the ball associations and the city will turn our attention to making improvements inside the park," Cockerell said.
The paving project is a major upgrade for the complex of nine lighted ball diamonds, concession stands and bleachers. The scene is worth a drive-through on a night of ballgames just to see it.
The project not only replaced the crumbling blacktop but also improved ditches and embankments, added additional parking areas, repaved the Holly Street and Lindsey Lane entrances, and remodeled the pond picnic area with its mountain-bike trail.
One previous eyesore had been waste control and its pickup dumpster at the park. That, too, was improved by the having dumpster being set upon a concrete pod and a fence placed around it.
The $537,000 project was done by the City of Atlanta awarding a contract to Tri-State Well Service in Bloomburg, the winning bidder for the project. Tri-State is owned by Craig Hale.
"The two-inch asphalt paving should last our lifetime," said Frank Allday, who worked with Tri-State on the parking lot and has long been a leader in improving the park.
Each year the baseball facility reaches more than 600 residents age 5 to 14. Atlanta Mayor Keith Crow had said earlier he was pleased with the project.
"The sports complex facility has long been a dream of mine and others," he said. "The park goes back some 15 years and brings together this 88 acre park with its pond and also the area where the Mattie Lanier Community Center is located."
'When the Atlanta Baseball Association had the idea to apply for the state's park program with its matching funds, people like Dennis Stanley, Barron Christensen and Don Crutcher just led the fight to get it done," the mayor said.
"It was a hope and wish of a lot of us that we could have the fields, hiking trails around and the pond area, all for the benefit of the people. Now I'm really excited we have this paving done. It's going to make a tremendous difference in the way local people and visitors come, use and appreciate this park."
The mayor said most of the funding for the park had come from the Atlanta Economic Development Corporation with help from others, including the Atlanta School District, which has boys' and girls' baseball and softball facilities at the park.