- October 10, 2024
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Local athletes may soon have safer fields to play on at Ralph Carter Park: Palm Coast Parks and Recreation is planning to regrade the fields in 2024 to fix drainage problems.
Parks and Recreation Director James Hirst said the city budgeted $425,000 for the project in the fiscal year 2024 to address concerns residents raised last spring about the park. The work is expected to start this spring.
Youth sports teams use the fields at Ralph Carter Park, located at 1385 Rymfire Drive, for practices, and other local organizations use them for events.
Over 100 parents, coaches and kids from local youth sports teams flooded a City Council meeting in May to demand that the city fix the fields. Mad Dogs flag football coach Jarrod Maxwell said during the meeting that the fields were a safety hazard because of poor drainage after rainstorms.
Maxwell told the Observer that since the park reopened in August, local teams have worked together to minimize the impact on the Ralph Carter fields. The Mad Dogs have been cycling through several local parks for practice and holding games at the Indian Trails Sports Complex during the fall season.
So far, he said, the Mad Dogs have only canceled a few practices this fall because of the weather and the potential impact to the field, he said.
“We all have no issue with that because it's going to help preserve the fields for the future,” he said. “So we don't want to get to a point where we damaged a field so bad that we have to find a whole new location and go to.”
Maxwell said that after the teams came to the City Council meeting, several council members and city staff have reached out to work with them to find a solution so that the city’s kids can play safely on the fields.
“I'm happy for them. I'm happy that other leagues came together. I'm happy that both high schools came together, and we were able to make a stand for these kids that was very much needed,” he said.
Hirst said Parks and Recreation staff hope to begin work on the repairs next May.
“We’re looking to really try and get those drains working pretty good so we can have as much play as possible,” Hirst said.
The work would include installing under-drains, re-grading the field, replacing the sod and addressing some lighting problems, he said.
The idea, Hirst said, is to keep the fields open through the end of the next spring session and then close the park down in May for the summer to complete the work. Depending on when the new sod roots, the fields would reopen in the fall of 2024.
“Those dates are very tentative, obviously,” he said. “Hopefully [it won’t be] too long, but we're probably looking at quite a few months.”
