City asked to add to P-4 complex plan
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 24, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/ETHAN SMITH
Charles Wright speaks to the Goldsboro City Council on Monday night to ask that two buildings for indoor sports be added to the plan for a P-4 Multi-Sports Complex.
Charles Wright, speaking on behalf of Wayne County Citizens for Better Schools, went to Monday night's Goldsboro City Council meeting to request changes to the current P-4 Multi-Sports Complex agreement between the city and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
Wright said he does not wish to take anything away from the current plan for eight soccer fields being built on Oak Forest Road. But he said he would like to see two buildings added to the project so that sports such as basketball, volleyball, wrestling, martial arts and gymnastics could also take place at the proposed complex.
The request, Wright said, was about inclusion for all sports teams in the county.
Current plans for the facility show it covering 62 acres.
"In case anyone is not familiar with that amount of square feet, we're talking about enough space for four Berkeley Malls, nine Wayne Community school complexes, 10 NFL football fields, 75 city annex buildings and 770 high school basketball courts," Wright said.
That means there is space for an additional two buildings to house indoor sports, Wright said.
"One would be a building that would house three gymnasiums, three full-court basketball courts, and one would be a main event building," Wright said. "Both buildings would be approximately 75,000 square feet."
If the additional buildings are allowed, the sports that would be played in them are all AAU-sanctioned sports, and would therefore bring in additional tournaments and tourism dollars to Goldsboro and Wayne County, Wright said.
"At the same time, you'd be opening it up to tens of thousands more children to participate in their sports, and also you allow the local parents and schools to come out and support the children in these sports," Wright said.
But the facilities for the indoor sports Wright is talking about are already coming to fruition in other forms, said Mayor Pro-Tem Chuck Allen.
"I want to be sure everybody knows what we're doing outside of this initiative," Allen said. "We're building the W.A. Foster Center at Mina Weil (Park), and it's got a new basketball facility in it, and it has a lot of these same things you're asking for in it .... Secondly, I just want to be sure everybody knows that right now we're partnering with the school system in the next couple of months, and we'll have very good use of Dillard Gym, Greenwood Gym and Carver Heights Gym. That goes a long, long way in accommodating what you're asking us to do, and costs millions less to the taxpayer."
The city is working to finalize an agreement with Wayne County Public Schools that would provide after-hours use of gymnasiums, fields and rooms at the schools Allen referenced in exchange for the city maintaining several city school ballfields.
"I don't know what that does to what (Wright) is asking, but I think it does a lot to accommodate all those programs (Wright mentioned)," Allen said. "We've got 8,800 kids in the city under 18. Our job is to look out for all the kids. And I think what this does, it gives us a lot more facilities where a lot of these kids are."
Wright said his understanding of the agreement for the Multi-Sports complex was that it would be funded mostly by the occupancy tax and that funding the two additional buildings would incur no additional cost to the city taxpayer.
"We are quite aware of what the city is doing with the W.A. Foster Center and with the contract with the schools," Wright said. "That was not our purpose to ignore that, but it just doesn't have anything to do with this proposal and what we are requesting. We are specifically requesting two buildings, on empty space, that could be phased in at whatever time the city feels it's a good time and when they have the money."
Wright finished by saying that the contract, if updated to reflect the request of Wayne County Citizens for Better Schools to build two buildings for indoor sports on the property, does not need to specify a time frame for the construction to take place, but would only need to state that the buildings would be constructed at some point in the future.