Texas Parks and Wildlife grant to fund Granite Shoals sports facility
The future home of the Granite Shoals Multipurpose Sports Facility. The building is located next to the Roddick Tennis Center in Granite Shoals. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
JENNIFER FIERRO • STAFF REPORTER
AUSTIN — The city of Granite Shoals received an unexpected lunchtime treat March 23.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, through its point system, awarded the city $500,000 to build a multipurpose sports facility on Phillips Ranch Road next to the Roddick Tennis Center, which houses full-length covered tennis courts as well as smaller courts for younger children.
“The city is overwhelmed with receiving this grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife,” City Manager Ken Nickel said. “It’s given us an opportunity to have a place for our children to be able to play a variety of sports in this new facility.”
The grant is a match to the land and a building already on the property. It will help create two soccer fields for 14-and-under players, two volleyball courts, two basketball courts, three batting cages, one shuffleboard court, and one pickleball court. The courts will be located in the middle building between the Roddick Tennis Center and the smaller tennis courts near city hall on Phillips Ranch Road.
The grant also includes a girls softball field or youth baseball field in an area facing RR 1431.
City staff applied for the grant in September.
Going into the meeting, a Granite Shoals multipurpose sports facility ranked as the commission’s top non-urban outdoor project with 115 points, according to its website.
Nickel was pleased the commission will be able to assist in creating a valuable complex next to the tennis center and Manzano Hike, Bike and Run Trail, named after former resident and Olympian Leonel Manzano.
“That will make a difference for our children,” Nickel said.
jfierro@thepicayune.com
2 thoughts on “Texas Parks and Wildlife grant to fund Granite Shoals sports facility”
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Mr. McCoy you always have an answer to everything? yet you have lost multiple times in election. I got a an idea how about why don’t you talk about how great these things are yet for our children.glass half empty or full or how about quit being an internet warrior
While it is good that GS at least gets something, it is a great shame and sadness that the city still refuses to do anything like these in the 18 local neighborhood parks where they are most needed for a long time. This grant is solely to aggrandize the city hall complex area where the tennis courts ” so called” complex has been a failure. I do wonder if the city used the same property acreage for their “matching” as they used for their “free leasing” for that non-existent tennis complex of a promised 16 courts in the same area?
What is the city going to do about access for this facility which is a mole and more from the local families and youth in a high traffic area? There are no hike and bike trails nor paths from the core neighborhoods of the community. There is only motorized traffic which only adds more strain and time for many families instead of spreading this grant around into the differing and much more neighborhood localized parks. This could also include acquiring more park space where necessary.
Just another sweet and sour day in the life of GS residents and families. A city staff and council that thinks more of their old quarry folly and city hall than the many hundreds of children and youth and families in local neighborhoods. As noted, remember their folly of the tennis courts complex? How successful has that decision been for the general population? A free “lease” of 7 to 8 acres of tax-payer property for a failed project for 15 years. Now thousands of State tax-payer dollars for only a single failing area instead of a greater good spreading out such dollars for the citizens in their own local areas.