Newberry open to help from GSC with Nations Park

The Newberry City Commission acknowledged its dissatisfaction with the performance of Nations Park at a joint meeting with the Alachua County Commission last week.

“The first two years have been disappointing,” Newberry Mayor Bill Conrad said. “We have not achieved the number of tournaments we would like. We are going to relook at all our options with our newly-elected commission.”

Nations Park is an open invitational tournament baseball and softball park featuring 16 stadiums according to the park Web site. It was built in 2012.

Conrad said the City was grateful to the county for funding close to $7 million of the approximate $7.3 million to build the park.

“The County understood it would take time for the park to really get going,” County Commission Chair Lee Pinkoson said. “We figured it would take about three years to ramp up, and we’re in year two. We did make a major commitment, and it’s eating up a lot of the bed tax, but I think it has all the potential in the world.”

Conrad stated that Newberry was open to receiving as much help as it could get from the Gainesville Sports Commission in attracting events to the park for the summer.

“We would like to work to book tournaments with the GSC,” Conrad said. “The City is open to managing the park itself or having an outside agency, like GSC, manage it. By 2015 we hope to have a new contract with either GSC or a new entity.”

City Commissioner Jordan Marlowe added that the new commission would bring fresh insight concerning the park.

“Nations Park is a central part of Newberry, and we have some new ideas to work with,” he said. “Everyone wants to see Nations Park succeed.”

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