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Build it and they will come

Orange Park athletic field gets new advocate

Jesse Hollett
Posted 2/23/17

ORANGE PARK – When Larry Klaybor first started going to the Orange Park Athletic Association Sports Complex with his kids in 1998, he never expected that nearly two-decades later the field would …

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Build it and they will come

Orange Park athletic field gets new advocate


Posted

ORANGE PARK – When Larry Klaybor first started going to the Orange Park Athletic Association Sports Complex with his kids in 1998, he never expected that nearly two-decades later the field would look the same as it always had – ailing, outdated and somewhat dilapidated.

With an association board governing the field that can only do so much and a town that can only offer so much help, Klaybor has begun the process of jumpstarting a group who can keep its collective eye on the ball of restoring the park.

The OPAA Alumni Association is a new group of 10 individuals who, in some way or another, have been associated with the park. Its goal is to help bridge the gap of services to one of Clay County’s largest athletic fields.

“There’s no money out here, parks and recreation doesn’t support this park,” said Klaybor, president of the Alumni Association. “The county doesn’t support the park – they support the town which supports the park. We want to be an advocate for the park. The conditions I see today are the same conditions I saw in 1999, 15 or 20 years ago, and people will say that’s the condition it’s been in for years and years and years.”

The conditions Klaybor points out from even a cursory walk around one of the park’s seven baseball fields reveals a park that needs care – and funds – that the park is just not getting.

The fences are warped, exposing sharp metal at the bottom that could easily cause injury. The dugout’s benches remain in disrepair with broken pieces of wood exposed. The clay on the field has moved towards the grass, creating a lip where a ball could pop up and strike a child in the face.

Much of the lighting is outdated as well and would require tens of thousands of dollars to replace.

OPAA board president Phil Hutchens said an extra organization created to help the park won’t fix all the issues the park deals with, but that it’s a “step in the right direction.”

“We all have the one thing in common – we love that park and we believe wholeheartedly in the existence of OPAA,” Hutchens said.

But it’s not just a large lump sum of money that is needed to rebuild the park – which, if it happened, would be the first such appropriation since its construction. Rebuilding also means more children playing in the park. Among the 12-acre park’s seven baseball fields, softball field and two football fields – Klaybor said there’s only 180 kids participating this year.

When he first came to the park, he estimates that number to be approximately 600. He said when baseball season starts March 11, the teams must play away games at different fields and bring in other teams because there’s just not enough teams to play against at the field to make the membership fee worth the price.

To combat that, The Alumni Association hopes to travel to different schools and mingle with the physical education coaches to get the word out.

“We need to tell them, ‘hey, we’ve got a park here, come see it,” he said.

But there’s another issue, and it’s right across the street. Despite the park technically belonging to the Town of Orange Park, many of the children who play at the park are from all over Clay County.

Roughly 70 percent of the children at the school nearest to the park, Grove Park Elementary, receive free or reduced lunch. Because that classification is awarded based on parental income or housing status, it means many residents nearest to the it can’t play in the park because of the membership fees, which can range anywhere from $85 to $250 a season.

Klaybor and the alumni association will hold community fundraisers and solicit private donations to create a fund to pay for membership fees for students who otherwise might not be able to participate at the park.

In October, the Town of Orange Park received a $50,000 Florida Recreation Development Assistance Program grant to fix up the park, but that money belongs to earmarked projects.

The picnic areas can be upgraded along with some of the fields, but the dilapidated wooden pole lighting will stay along with other necessary improvements until something changes.

“Nobody’s taking care of this but us, and that’s just the way it has to be,” Klaybor said.