Cooper soccer plans $5M renovations

It’s a numbers game at Lake Country Soccer Inc. right now. And the winning number is five.

The nonprofit soccer corporation plans a $5 million renovation over five phases in the next five years at the Cooper Family Soccer Complex. Plans call for three turf fields, new locker rooms, press box and concourse improvements.

The initial phase is a press box for field one, which currently is the only turf field at the complex on the north side of Pythian Street. Lake Country Soccer Executive Director John Markey said the press box is the first piece in upgrading fields one and two.

“Our goal is to make field one and field two stadium fields, so we can hold championship events and have two fields that are identical operating,” he said. “The press box overlooks both fields.”

Nesbitt Construction Inc. is handling the $400,000 summer press box project, which is about 70 percent complete.

About half the cost is covered from hotel-motel tax funds provided by the city and previously earmarked for the Wonders of Wildlife museum. Springfield City Council reallocated $201,250 to Lake Country Soccer in February 2015, and Markey said the private soccer organization is covering the rest.

Lake Country Soccer operates under the umbrella of the Springfield-Greene County Park Board as a public-private partnership to run youth soccer leagues and tournaments.

“We’ve had to turn teams away in our last two tournaments,” Markey said. “It’s really coming on tournament stuff like that. The league fees and individual fees of our players really goes into covering the operating costs of our leagues.”

For the additional four phases of renovations, Lake Country Soccer has launched a fundraising campaign called One Goal 2016. As funding comes in, Markey said the other phases will be scheduled.

“The most important phase is to get turf down on field two,” he said.

The plan for phase three is to build player locker rooms and showers.

“The locker rooms we have on field one don’t have showers,” he said. “We want to go on the north side of the press box and add new locker room units so that it would be sufficient to actually hold college-type championships, college games and professional games.”

The next two phases include installing turf on field three, which primarily would be used for training, and improving the concourse area.

“The final phase is to completely redo the concourse area,” he said. “We want to redo that whole area for the fans.”

Lake Country Soccer board President Brenda Turnbull said the plans have been two years in the making.

“The application for the (Wonders of Wildlife) money became available to us and we tried to think of what we could do with it for youth soccer and for the area,” she said.

Turnbull, who works as a sales representative for Novartis and has been involved with Lake Country Soccer for nearly 20 years, said the project is designed to grow interest in soccer in Springfield.

“The goal is for kids to learn to play soccer, love to play soccer and love the sport,” she said. “Kids of all abilities – they don’t have to be rock stars, they can be recreational all the way up to the very competitive college players – we just want them to enjoy and play the sport.”

Markey said another goal of complex renovations is to bring more paying people into the Springfield market.

“Our spring tournament had 188 teams, and of those 188, close to 140 were from outside of the Springfield area,” he said. “They came in, stayed at hotels, ate at Springfield restaurants and bought their gas at the Springfield gas stations. The economic impact of when we bring these outside events in is huge.”

With over 7,500 guests, the spring tournament impacted the local economy by an estimated $1.8 million, based on a tracking formula used by the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Markey’s also looking into bringing in St. Louis FC, of the United Soccer League, to play an exhibition game in town.

“I’m talking to St. Louis’ new pro team about possibly bringing a pro game or an exhibition game in here next spring when their season gets going again,” he said. “They can come in and our fans can get that exposure here.”