The Clarendon County Junior Chamber of Commerce has donated $15,000 for the remodeling of the Clarendon County Parks and Recreation baseball fields.
Recreation Executive Director LeBon Joye said that the chamber approached him wanting to make a donation toward the baseball fields earlier this year. After deciding where the changes needed to be made, Joye gave the go-ahead.
After discussing the changes between the two entities, the only thing the junior chamber asked was that Recreation only use local contractors to work on the project. Joye also agreed to put signage up to let people know who the funding was made by.
“We decided upon the projects that that were in most need of repair for them to fund, those were fields 1, 2 and 3,” he said. “The old concrete, block-style dugouts that had been there for years were demolished on the three fields. Those slabs get hot during the summer months.”
The new dugouts, even though the same widths and lengths look bigger due to the height of the roof being raised from 6.5 to 7.5 feet.
This modification creates a cooler space for the players once the heat-wave starts in the summer months.
According to Joye, a local contractor built the roofs for the dugouts and built the fence work as well as all the metal siding and topping for the dugouts. The county budget paid up front for the work that was done on the project and the Chamber will reimburse them for the total amount.
They replaced the dugouts on fields 1, 2 and 3, and the county Public Works Department brought their heavy equipment and knocked the original ones down and then took all that debris off then we had a local contractor come out and meet with me for fencing then we laid out where we wanted the fence and described to him what we were looking for.
“It helps us out because this is money that I did not have in the budget to take on a project such as this,” said Joye. “The timing could not have been more perfect. The players are enjoying the changes and we are grateful for this donation.”
