Sumrall residents are about to receive several more amenities and options for their sports needs, as the Sumrall Board of Aldermen has recently awarded the bid for Phase II of the Sumrall Sports Complex improvements plan.
That measure was taken at the June 6 board meeting, where members voted to award the approximate $2.5 million bid to MitchCo Construction of Hattiesburg.
“I’m extremely excited to be moving forward on this,” Mayor Joel Lofton said. “It seems like it’s taken forever, but this is a big step forward.
“I think in the very near future, folks will really be able to see more progress there.”
Phase II of the project will include eight tennis courts, along with a facility that will offer locker rooms, concession stands, public restrooms, viewing areas and storage. It also will include an additional soccer field, along with more parking, to the site off Mississippi 42.
“We hope that, given cooperative weather and no major supply chain issues for our contractor, we’re hopeful that within one year we will have the facility (finshed),” Lofton said.
Plans for Phase II began in 2021 for the site, which had seen extensive work over the previous months. As part of that, town officials received $600,000 from the Mississippi House of Representatives, which was secured with the help of District 101 Representative Kent McCarty and District 41 Senator Joey Fillingane.
Previously, Fillingane helped secure funding for work at the sports complex under two initiatives: $500,000 through the BP Settlement Bill and $2 million from Senate Bill 3065.
“The town was given this money through the legislature years ago, and it’s been sitting in an account,” Lofton said. “The longer the funds sit there, the less we can do with them.
“The funding for this was set aside years ago, and we’ve actually scaled the project back some, because what it would have funded three years ago, now with price increases post-COVID, things have gotten so high that we’re concerned that the value of the dollar continues to shrink. So we felt it very important to move forward as expeditiously as possible.”
The $500,000 is part of $70 million distributed statewide as part of a BP settlement. That bill – formally known as Senate Bill 2002 – was the result of Mississippi’s lawsuit against the oil giant for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in which 210 million gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Under Senate Bill 3065, Sumrall received $2 million for its recreational facilities, part of $207 million in state-issued bonds for several projects and educational institutions around the state.
Although several weather issues caused delays on Phase 1 of the Sumrall Sports Complex, officials were able to complete new driveway, a parking lot and striping for the site. In early 2020, several loads of dirt were installed at the soccer field to help with some long-standing drainage issues.
However, the dirt settled in an improper fashion, in part because of the constant rain and in part because the work was conducted too quickly. Since then, however, the entire surface of the playing field has been redone.
