Monterey Gets One Bid For Soccer Field, Aldermen To Consider

Monterey opened bids for a soccer field and paved parking lot at Black Bottom Sports Fields Thursday, receiving one bid.

The bid came in at $248,250 with an additional $35,500 if the city opts to pave the parking lot. Cultural Administrator Rafferty Cleary said the city would have liked to get more bids, but the bid they did receive looks promising.

“We kind of expected them to be a little higher than that, and so I guess I can only speak for myself, of course the Board of Aldermen will have to review this at our January 8 meeting,” Cleary said. “Not a bad price considering myself, the engineer and some of our board members thought it would be much higher.”

The Board of Alderman will have to vote on whether to accept the bid in January. Cleary said the ultimate goal of the project is to allow the schools to have a soccer team.

“Currently if these students at these schools want to play soccer they actually have to take part, at Monterey High School for instance if you want to play soccer you have to go to Upperman or Cookeville,” Cleary said. “There is no soccer team and most of that is due to lack of facilities. If they have a team, they’d have no where to play.”

Cleary said it was important for Monterey citizens to understand that the addition of the soccer field will still allow for other uses at that facility.

“Even though we’re building a regulation-sized soccer field, this area still is going to serve as a softball field, and it will still be able to be utilized by our youth football teams for practice purposes as well,” Cleary said. “So, regulation-sized soccer field but also a multi-purpose field if you will, because we don’t want to take away the opportunities that the youth football teams and softball teams currently have.”

Cleary said he hopes to avoid restricting access to the field during construction.

“The goal, and whether this happens or not, yet to be seen, is to do construction at a time when softball and football wouldn’t be using the field anyways, but there could be some disruptions caused by construction,” Cleary said.

Cleary said the grant does not include lighting the field.

“Believe it or not the lighting is like way more expensive than the construction of the field itself,” Cleary said. “We’re going to have to get creative, find some grants and figure out a way to tackle the lighting part of this.”

Cleary said this project started about a year ago when the city received a $250,000 grant to build a soccer field.

“It’s taken us a while to have our engineer to come up with a design and select a site where that field could be placed here in town,” Cleary said.