By Sarrah Peters, News Editor
On Friday, December 8, The Etowah County Mega Sports Complex Authority met with representatives from Olympia Construction to review topographical and boundary maps of the proposed site of the complex.
Authority Chair Ralph Burke and authority member Craig Ford met with Jana Cordell from Chambless-King Architects and Jeremy Bain and Jon Perkins from Olympia Construction. Perkins is a civil engineer.
The topographical survey, which show the elevations in the land, was created with a laser survey by helicopter. Laser surveys are less expensive and very accurate.
The authority met to review the maps and plans for the complex. Plans for the complex were overlaid on top of the topographical survey.
“We can take a five-pod softball field and overlay it on the maps,” said h Burke. “And that’s what we were doing, basically. We take the plans that we have and now we can take the actual boundaries and the actual survey and put them together.”
Doing this gave the Etowah County Mega Sports Complex Authority a better idea of the precise locations for proposed components of the complex.
“It helps us understand better where we can locate fields and parking and trails and other things that we are going to put in the complex,” said Burke.
The meeting brought the Mega Sports Complex one step closer to becoming a reality.
“This just puts us a little further down the road on the sports complex,” said Burke. “It looks like we are going to be in a position to break ground by the 1st of April.”
“Everything moves slower than I want things to, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for making the sports complex a reality for the taxpayers,” said Ford. “It’s going to offer a great service to our citizens and create new jobs in the area.”
Burke said that the first facility to be built would be soccer fields.
Ford added that the reason the sports complex is starting with the soccer fields is because the resource in high demand in the Etowah County area and it is a very cost-efficient way to start the project.