Wanted: Room to play

The ground may be harder than leather-bound twine, but baseball is on the brains of Liberty Lake parents who are urging their city to build a baseball park.

“We just need someone to step up and say, ‘Here’s some land to work on,’ ” said Shane Brickner, of the Eastside Little League.

Liberty Lake doesn’t have land for baseball at the moment, but the city of 6,000 sees the potential for a baseball park on 14 acres of flat ground owned by Central Valley School District.

The land just east of Liberty Lake Elementary School is targeted for a middle school, complete with sports fields. While school construction is still a ways off, Liberty Lake officials are suggesting that the sports fields be built sooner, with some help from local government.

“This would definitely be a cooperative venture between Central Valley and the city,” said Doug Smith, Liberty Lake’s community development director. “It’s in the conceptual stage. Both sides have agreed it would be great.”

Smith said the city has located three potential sites for baseball parks – the Central Valley property and two parcels of land to the north of Interstate 90 that are currently slated for more than 2,000 homes.

The league’s request for a ballpark is the latest turn in the ongoing battle by organized sports programs for playing space. It’s a battle that will heat up next month as teams began reserving time on playing fields controlled by the Valley’s three school districts.

“Fields are at a premium in the Valley because we fight Spokane Youth Sports and Pony Baseball and soccer,” said Mike Asan of Spokane Valley Baseball League. “Our league alone – 5- to 13-year-olds – there’s 1,200 kids.”

Playing fields are so crowded in the spring that Asan’s group waits until summer to start playing. Liberty Lake poses more of a problem than other areas because its school’s enrollment is higher than most. Many sports organizations try to keep their children playing in their own neighborhoods. But when a school like Liberty Lake Elementary has so many children, it’s hard to get them all playing time on the school ball field, Asan said.

With only one nonschool sports park in the greater Spokane Valley, schools have shouldered the load for athletics. City park development has focused on other needs. Spokane Valley is slated to spend more than a $1 million this year improving existing parks, though much of that money will be spent on swimming pools.

Liberty Lake is currently planning a new, 14-acre park in the Rocky Hill subdivision. Baseball fields are not in the cards for Rocky Hill, but much of the flat land could be used for soccer, Smith said.

The county’s easternmost city has tried to accommodate baseball. Last summer, Liberty Lake agreed to provide liability insurance to a privately owned, four-softball field complex on the north side of Interstate 90. The complex, known as Sports World, used to operate as a business, but closed some time ago and is now for sale as developable land. Without the city’s backing, the fields would not have been available.

Likewise, Spokane Valley hopes to create an eight-acre park adjacent to a proposed elementary school at the corner of Mission Avenue and Long Road, which could result in another sports area.