NORTHERN VIRGINIA DAILY

Andrew Fournier, young soccer player

By Ashley May

The Warren County Board of Supervisors scored a goal with Warren County’s soccer players and their fans by voting Tuesday night to fund about $300,000, the local portion of a proposed $3.6 million professional-quality soccer facility on a 30 acre tract of the Avtex Superfund site.

The board voted unanimously to adopt a resolution in support of the Ed Stump Soccer Complex, which is in development to be the showcase project for the U.S. Soccer Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency’s initiative to redevelop and recycle Superfund sites.

The first such project to be proposed, the county is expected to provide infrastructure such as irrigation lines, a storm water management system , sidewalks, and curb and gutter, and sidewalks for the complex. The bankruptcy trustee also must purchase about nine acres of Ed Stump Park at $9,000 per acre. The cost to the county, at $300,000 is estimated to be about 10 percent of the total project.

Once the infrastructure is in place, the soccer foundation is prepared to step in and spend about $1.7 million on the remainder of the first phase of the project, which will prepare the site and construct several top of the line soccer fields.

Phase two of the project, estimated at $1.5 million, is the building of "a full competition ready complex that includes and administration building with restrooms. Full utilities, paved and landscaped parking, bleachers, lighting, and playground equipment," Stephen A. Heavener, executive director of the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority, wrote in a report to the Front Royal Town Council and county board.

That phase is not yet funded, but may be secured through corporate or supplier sponsorships, and possible soccer foundation grants, Heavener said.

"I think that looking at the anticipated cost of the project, we would be incredibly dumb not to participate in this," Happy Creek District Supervisor Brackenridge H. "Brack" Bentley said after several of about 40 children and adults attending the meeting spoke in favor of the project.

Parents involved with the Front Royal Warren County Youth Soccer League described benefits to the community beyond new playing fields for the children. The economic benefits that would help the county, the positive effect of team sports on children and the fitting use for the redeveloped Avtex site are all ample reasons to support it, they said.

Craig Laird of Royal Oak Computers pledged $1,000 to the as yet unfunded second phase of the project.

Andrew Fournier, 8, stood on a chair in front of the podium in his soccer uniform to speak in support of the project. All of his sisters and brothers play soccer on the Stump fields and those at Hilda J. Barbour Elementary School, he said. "Sometimes we trip because the field is rough. Sometimes we have to pick up rocks and glass," he said.

" I would really like to play on a nice field."

BACK