With the approval by the Lycoming County commissioners of $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, a $22 million project that was halted by the pandemic is back on track and has the potential to bring an estimated 400,000 people to the city to use a multi-field regional baseball/softball complex.

The complex will be located on a roughly 28-acre site, formerly the Susquehanna Supply and Danneker family property on Rose Street next to the highway and the Pennsylvania College of Technology, which had been acquired by the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce at the end of 2019.

“We all know what happened in March 2020, and unfortunately, that waylaid a lot of our work,” said Jason Fink, chamber president and CEO.

“When we went to get started again, when we rebid the project, we came to find out that it was a lot more expensive to build that project. We are looking at developing this into a seven-field, youth baseball and softball complex, with one of the fields being built to collegiate baseball size for Pennsylvania College of Technology to play their games there. In addition, they have shared with us they are intending to have their women’s softball program also play there,” Fink told the commissioners at their meeting this week.

Six fields in the complex will have 220-foot fences, while the collegiate field will have a 400-foot fence. The targeted time frame is to break ground there sometime in June, Fink said. The goal is to have the fields playable by next spring’s season.

Prior to initiating the project, the chamber had conducted a feasibility study to determine the economic impact on the community of the complex being built here.

“We did a lot of study on this, understanding that the fact that there is a big travel ball market out there, we thought that there might be a good possibility (of attracting teams) given the fact that we are the home to Little League Baseball with an interest in seeing teams come here to play,” Fink said.

“We, however, wanted to make sure that our hunch was right. We brought in a firm to be able to take and do a feasibility study for us. Their estimate was somewhere in the neighborhood of 390,000 estimated users of the complex annually after a three-year period,” he said.

The expectations are that Elm Park would also be involved with some of the tournament play because of its fairly close location to the proposed fields.

“If you look at the proximity of Elm Park to where this property is, you’re talking about a quarter of a mile to no more than a half-mile. The new bike path that is the extension with the riverwalk there will actually also serve as a way for people to park and then go to that as well. So we think there’s a lot of synergy there,” Fink said.

The city recently committed $1 million towards the project. The chamber has also committed $1 million annually to address debt service toward financing the project, Fink said, and is seeking entities interested in sponsoring naming rights for the fields.

“We anticipate with all the investment that’s taking place there, it will hopefully spur some additional development,” he said.

“One of the nice things that the city — and actually the county and school district — has implemented is LERTA. And being able to have LERTA in place, especially with some of the opportunities with the vacant lands in and around Third and Rose streets. There’s property there that folks could be able to acquire to develop with that type of traffic. We think that will spur some development there on some properties that have been talked about for a number of years, but have yet to be developed,” Fink said.

LERTA or Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance is a tax abatement program which reduces taxes on a graduated scale on any improvements made on a property over a specific period of time.

“We’re excited to be able to see this with Maynard Street development already underway. We think this will enhance a lot of that. We are aware of the fact that the developers did use our study, to be able to show that to some of the clients they were working with,” Fink added.

The project will also be the first in the county to use the brownfield program, which deals with areas where the future use could be affected by environmental contamination because of industrial or commercial use in the past.

The site for the complex is located on land that not only was used by Susquehanna Supply but, prior, was the location of the old city landfill until it was closed in the early 1970s.

“It’s been fully capped. We’ve been working with DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) and we’re very pleased to be able to hear that we’ve got a clean property that we’re developing, based off of all the testing that we’ve worked with DEP on making sure that it is something that we’re able to develop,” Fink said.

“We’re excited because it’s definitely something that really doesn’t have a lot of other uses. And it’ll be a great showcase to be able to show a brownfield being converted into a play field. And we think this is a great opportunity for us to be able to use that to bring in other activities like this,” he added.

The new fields will be equipped with sports turf, which will also enable teams to practice much earlier in the season.

“The other thing is the 400-foot-fence field actually can be used as a seventh smaller field because they will be able to bring in a portable fence to make that into a seventh playing field,” Fink said.

Travel teams are a growing trend, Commissioner Scott Metzger noted, with teams traveling across the country to play.

“It’s something that’s been going on for 20 years, it continues to grow each year. And we’re excited about that market and having them come to the home of Little League Baseball, and doing tournaments here also,” Metzger said.

“To have that many visitors come to Lycoming County, we hope that it will grow the county not only with visitors, but maybe some of them will look to relocate here…it’ll be a beautiful way to showcase our county,” Metzger said.