The Columbia city council will be hearing the proposed construction of improvements to football fields five and six at the Columbia Cosmopolitan Recreation Area (Cosmo Park) at Monday’s City Council Meeting.
The budget for the proposed project is $428,834. It would be funded through a donation from the John D. Hall Memorial Trust.
The improvements include replacing the goalposts and scoreboards on both fields and renovating the Urban Wussler Shelter/Concession facility.
According to the Parks and Recreation Director Gabe Huffington, the area is in need of accessibility improvements.
“The biggest component of this project is to improve the seating on field #5 for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessibility, but then more so for field #6 we are going to construct a large grandstand of seating for approximately 400 people,” said Huffington.
Many groups, such as the Columbia Youth Football League (CYFL) and the mid-Missouri Lacrosse League will be impacted by the improvements as they are the main users of fields five and six.
“We also have different user groups that are allowed to rent the field on a first-come, first-serve bases, and then also we are looking at how we can use it from a recreational standpoint with some of our special events in the park,” Huffington says.
If the construction is approved, portions of the improvements will be completed by summer 2023. In order to avoid conflict with the CYFL season, which runs from September to November.
The items that are projected to be done by this summer are the goal post and scoreboard replacements and the engineering design work for the project.
The concession renovations, new grandstand, and new bleacher pad are scheduled to begin after the 2023 CYFL season, with an anticipated completion date of late summer 2024.