SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCSC) – Some big changes are coming to a more than $12 million sports complex in Summerville.
The Oakbrook Sports Complex, which will be located at the current Oakbrook YMCA, will include “state-of-the-art” turf sports fields and more.
“This is where, if you talk to anybody in our area, ‘I learned how to play baseball here, I learned how to swim here, I learned how to soccer here,’ so this is where we started, and now where we want to take to a whole new level,” Summerville YMCA CEO Joe Debney says.
The Summerville YMCA will contribute 17 acres of land, and the county will foot the bill, which has more than doubled in the last three years.
Right now, the fields have poor drainage, uneven turf, and chalk outlines for fields.
Once finished, the new complex will include two soccer fields and other multi-use athletic fields with subsurface drainage, lighting, parking, concessions, a playground, and restrooms.
“If you come out here our fields need rest,” Debney says. “Being able to dry these fields off quickly, being able to have a better facility for these kids, where we don’t have rainy days, where they don’t have to go somewhere else to play.”
Dorchester County Council Chairman Tom Friddle says the new complex will allow the county to host travel sports in an area where outdoor recreation is exploding.
“With a first-class facility, not only for the local community but travel tourism. People coming in here to bring teams to travel, stay spend money in the Summerville market, in the Dorchester area,” Friddle says.
This project is a part of the county’s broader goal to revitalize the Oakbrook area overall using TIF funds, which Friddle explained as tax revenue from the area being put back into it.
Friddle says they were partnered with a different organization for the project originally, but “couldn’t work out the logistics.”
They’re currently in the permitting process and hope to break ground on the project over the summer if all goes as planned, Friddle says. Once they break ground, he estimates the complex will take about 18 months to be completed.
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