{"id":14175,"date":"2016-05-13T11:41:02","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T15:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14175"},"modified":"2016-05-18T17:36:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T21:36:48","slug":"park-options-should-include-new-baseball-diamond-say-councillors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/park-options-should-include-new-baseball-diamond-say-councillors\/","title":{"rendered":"Park options should include new baseball diamond, say Councillors"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

The resurging popularity of baseball in Aurora and King has led to a relative shortage of places to play, and the new parkland on Mavrinac Park could help pick up the slack, say Councillors.<\/p>\n

While a public meeting is set at Town Hall for Tuesday, May 31, from 5 – 7 p.m. to allow the community at large to weigh in on various amenities to go in the park, a full-scale baseball diamond should be on the table for discussion, according to Councillor Jeff Thom. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had conversations with the Aurora King Baseball Association and they are really having an unprecedented level of registrations and they can\u2019t cope with the demand for spots,\u201d said Councillor Thom. \u201cIn fact, for some of the rep baseball teams in Aurora, their home field is now in doubt. To me, that is just wrong. They are also reducing their capacity and having to make sacrifices for time. These are things sports teams have to do all the time, but\u2026they are turning kids away. Now that we have a parkland coming on board, for me, having that option for Council to discuss and consider would have been nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Various options were presented to Council last month by Al Downey, Aurora\u2019s Director of Parks and Recreation, in a tentative concept plan which will be up for public discussion. Responding to the Councillor\u2019s concerns, Mr. Downey said a baseball diamond is a better fit for large-scale 10+ acre \u201ccommunity\u201d parks, rather than the \u201cneighbourhood\u201d park proposed for the Mavrinac site.<\/p>\n

\u201c[These amenities] include lights and we are concerned that if we put a lit facility [there] that would create the need for light poles 60 to 80 feet in the air, and that would certainly have an impact on adjacent residents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Councillor Thom questioned the difference between the lighting that would be required for a tennis court proposed for the Mavrinac site over what would be needed for a baseball diamond, Mr. Downey added the Town does not currently have adequate parkland available for building a new baseball diamond. <\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, that doesn\u2019t mean we couldn\u2019t look at repurposing, or we could look at a rethink of some of the plans we have for some existing lands that could accommodate a ball diamond,\u201d said Mr. Downey. \u201cWe understand that in the Master Plan it was a high priority and is something we would need to address within the 2017 capital budget as far as how we are going to proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Town purchased several acres of land in the Industrial Parkway and Vandorf Road area last year behind the former home of Hallmark Cards. At Council, Mayor Geoff Dawe suggested that would be an \u201cideal location\u201d for baseball and lighting would have minimal impact on the area.<\/p>\n

Baseball is indeed something that could be accommodated on the Hallmark lands, noted Mr. Downey, and is one of the areas where a \u201crethink\u201d on how to use the land would be needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the things with regards to the Hallmark lands centre around soccer fields, so if Council felt that perhaps those lands would be more appropriately dedicated to baseball, we would be more than happy to bring that forward to Council for your consideration,\u201d said Mr. Downey.<\/p>\n

While this option was put on the table, other Councillors called for baseball to be an option for Mavrinac neighbours to consider. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would rather get this done right rather than just get it done,\u201d said Councillor John Abel. \u201cWe should have a diamond somewhere east of Bayview and north of Wellington. It is a growing sport and you may see that demand come up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Councillor Thom: \u201cI am absolutely for a parkland in part of that area and I am happy to look at the mix of services offered to residents, but it doesn\u2019t make sense that if we have an identified need in the Master Plan, and we have land allocated for parks, that we [don\u2019t] look at all the options and then make a decision. As long as we get some baseball diamonds in the mix moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The resurging popularity of baseball in Aurora and King has led to a relative shortage of places to play, and the new parkland on Mavrinac Park could help pick up the slack, say Councillors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3GD","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 03:42:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}