City hopes that new brochure will attract money for park
For $100,000, a person can name baseball field
Extras cost $640,000
By Kara Chalmers
The city is selling itself.
In an effort to raise money to pay for finishing touches at the soon-to-be renovated Congress Springs Park, the city has released an illustrated brochure to market the venture. City officials hope that people will step forward and purchase amenities in exchange for public recognition of their support.
For example, a $50 donation can buy the donor a brick--with his or her name on it--that would be laid in the ground near the park's buildings and playground. If someone would like a baseball field named after him, it will require a $100,000 donation.
The money will pay for the infield, an arch backstop with a masonry wall, dugouts and bleachers. Smaller amenities, such as a scoreboard, a batting cage or even a trash can, cost $7,000, $5,000 and $1,500, respectively, according to the brochure.
Beside entire fields and plazas at the park, the brochure lists 29 individual items up for donation, the least expensive of which is an unnamed brick, for $10. The most expensive item is a storage building, for $60,000.
Congress Springs Park, a 10-acre city park used for organized sports such as baseball and soccer for kids, will undergo a $1.2 million renovation this summer. The renovation will maximize the number of playfields at the park and make the fields safer.
City officials and the park's user groups--such as Saratoga Little League and Saratoga Soccer--hope to include the high-end amenities as part of the new park. But the renovation project's price tag does not cover them, the total cost of which is expected to be an additional $640,000, according to the director of the city's public works department, John Cherbone.
Cherbone said the $1.2 million will only fund the basics--irrigation, grading of fields, new turf and some landscaping. He added that any items in the park today would be put back into the new park.
"That's just for the very basic infrastructure of the park," said Cary Bloomquist, of the public works department. "To get these amenities, we just don't have the money."
The brochure is available at city hall, on the city's website, and will be distributed to the parents of participants in the baseball and soccer leagues at the park.
The $1.2 million is twice the amount that the city originally anticipated for the renovation, and the city cannot afford to pay any more, Bloomquist said. So city officials have decided to turn to community members for help.
"If the community wants to see a world class park, with amenities, we need funding support," Bloomquist said.
According to Cherbone, all donors would be recognized, in some fashion, whether by way of a plaque on a park building or a monument in the park that would lists all donors together. According to him, businesses may donate items and be recognized, but businesses would be treated the same way as individuals. The businesses would not be allowed any additional advertising at the park. Cherbone said advertising at the park has not considered by the city.
Without donations, the park would end up looking not much differently than it does today, Cherbone said. Donations would allow aesthetically pleasing backstops at the park, rather than chain link fences, and real dugouts, rather than benches, he said. In addition, he said there are some items--such as the bricks--that would not be put in the park at all, without donations.
Amenities donations will go into a special city fund dedicated to the amenities project, called the Saratoga Youth Sports Fund, Cherbone said. The fund is a nonprofit account and any donations will be tax deductible.
Originally, the public works department and the park's users had hoped to create a youth sports foundation to solicit donations for park amenities. But now the city council is working on setting up a community foundation--with a broader mission of funding all kinds of city projects--that is not expected to get off the ground in time for the renovation of the park. The amenities project was a catalyst for the city's community foundation, Cherbone said.
The plan for the new park calls for eight soccer fields, and when not in use for soccer, the park will hold three Little League baseball fields, two semi-permanent Little League fields and two T-ball fields.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
