By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph City Council is evaluating building a new indoor and outdoor sports megaplex to help bring a variety of new sports opportunities to the city.
Mayor John Josendale says the new facility would be a great asset for the community.
"We would use it, we being the city, would use it during the week and it would be very positive," Josendale tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "Right now, we hear a lot of feedback where kids are having to practice very late into the evening because we just don't have enough facilities for it."
Josendale says the council is also looking at the possibility of making it a public private facility where tournaments could come on weekends to utilize the facility.
A feasibility study has been conducted and the city recently held a work session to discuss the project which is estimated to cost between $90 and $120 million.
Josendale says he's aware that is a large cost, but Josendale adds when you look at how it will benefit the city it makes sense.
"Bring tourism, bring people to St. Joe, we have a lot of people in St. Joe now that are on traveling teams and go to Kansas City to practice or to Omaha," Josendale explains. "The number of families that you hear that travel out of town on weekends, and this can allow them to stay home and do some of these activities."
Josendale says it will also give the opportunity to open up athletics to more people and allow participation in sports throughout the week.
Josendale says the outdoor aspect of the facility would be multipurpose fields.
"It's where you can use the field for, whether it be baseball, softball, soccer, and you can use it for lacrosse, another sport that's coming on," Josendale says. "It gives you the opportunity, and these are artificial turf so that you don't have the weather effect on a lot of these fields, it gives us the ability to use them more and keep kids active."