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Staff writer

The Andover City Council is interested in adding two soccer fields and keeping the hockey and skating rinks at Hawkridge Park, which is located near the border with Oak Grove.

Now, money is needed to fulfill this vision and the North Metro Soccer Association is being asked to help out.

“In the current state of the city’s capital improvement plan for parks, there’s not the funding available to take on major projects like this without the participation from the sports associations,” said Ted Butler, chairman of the Park and Recreation Commission.

The commission and the council at separate meetings in late January looked over a site plan for Hawkridge Park that would move the hockey rink and skating rink to the east side of the park. Two mid-size soccer fields would go where the rinks and baseball diamond were.

The North Metro Soccer Association has pushed for this project because it has been steadily growing each year and about 60 percent of the 1,700 participants live in Andover, according to the association’s president Barb Anderson.

Anderson will bring the city’s cost estimates to the soccer association’s Feb. 21 board of directors meeting for discussion on how much it can afford to contribute and to find out if some members could volunteer to reduce labor costs.

“Anything they can do as far as volunteers, material, anything like that will only help the situation,” said Assistant Public Works Director Todd Haas.

Estimated costs

Improvements at Hawkridge Park will likely be split over multiple phases with the soccer fields and the rinks being the higher priority and a warming house the lowest priority, according to a project cost spreadsheet prepared by Haas.

The first phase could include a well and irrigation system to water the grass in the spring, summer and fall and to flood the rinks in the winter. This existing parking lot would also be paved and expanded during this phase.

Rough estimates for the entire first phase could range from $268,000 to $400,000 depending on if the city performs the work or a contractor does.

The second phase focuses on adding an eight-foot paved trail throughout the park. This may cost around $25,000.

There is no estimate for constructing the warming house in the third phase.

Soccer association

Anderson is in her second year as the soccer association’s president, but she has been involved for 16 years. Her husband John Anderson is the current boys’ competitive director. Their two sons have played with association teams.

The North Metro Soccer Association uses 50 fields and primarily serves the communities of Andover, Anoka, Bethel, Coon Rapids, East Bethel, Ham Lake, Oak Grove and St. Francis, giving youth in these communities a recreational opportunity and providing volunteers so cities do not have to take on these expenses, Anderson said.

Recreational teams and competitive teams play in the spring and fall, although Anderson said most play in the spring. The 13- to 15-year-olds is the largest age range involved with the competitive teams. The six- to eight-year-olds make up the majority of recreational teams.

Participation has steadily increased as far back as Anderson can remember. The approximately 1,700 members in 2009 had increased by about 100 from 2008, according to Anderson.

She believes these numbers could keep growing because interest in the sport in America is growing, there is more emphasis on obesity prevention for youth and it in an inexpensive sport to play.

“Those benefits that soccer brings to your community are beyond just the day-to-day soccer,” Anderson told the park and recreation commission.

Finding fields

Anderson said the board of directors has a policy of not turning anyone away, but some parents in Andover and Oak Grove have to drive their kids all the way to East Bethel because of the time crunch to schedule games on a limited number of fields.

The board set three goals during a 2008 retreat, Anderson said, which were to redevelop the Web site, allow online registration and look for more field space in northern Andover and southern Oak Grove.

With the first two goals fulfilled, the association’s attention has turned to field expansion.

Anderson said the soccer association has set aside funds for a Hawkridge Park project. She does not know what the board will decide Feb. 21, but is happy that she and the association’s field director Mark Miller had a chance to meet with the city.

“My role is coordinating and bringing things to the board, providing them with as many things as possible and they take it from there,” Anderson said.

With the parks improvement budget suffering from the building slowdown, Councilmember Sheri Bukkila believes the soccer association will have to pay for most of the project to get it off the ground.

“Right now the city is not in any position to put any money into it because funding for parks is not there,” Bukkila said.

Councilmember Mike Knight said besides a financial contribution, the soccer association members could also help by devoting their time for hard labor such as landscaping.

Knight sees what is happening as more than a soccer issue. He believes that lacrosse will keep growing in popularity and high school coaches will want good sports association feeder programs, which will require more field space.

The demand and interest is there for field expansion projects, so a little has to be spent when possible to get things done in stages, he said.

Mayor Mike Gamache said a funding option could be a bond referendum that multiple sports associations could get involved with to make improvements at more than one park.

If the soccer field project is not funded this year, Gamache would at least like to see the well drilled to prepare for a future field improvement.

Hockey rinks

When the city was exploring budget cuts in early 2009, an idea brought up was to close the hockey and skating rinks at Hawkridge Park.

Neighborhood residents were not pleased with this proposal and flooded into Andover City Hall in April 2009 to let the public officials know how they felt.

Hawkridge Park rinks have served as feeder rinks for future St. Francis High School hockey players, residents said.

Butler said with other Andover hockey rinks concentrated in the southern half of the community, opportunities for hockey were needed elsewhere.

“To me, it’s important we have a variety of activities available in parks that are spread throughout the city and not just in one centralized location,” Butler said.

An irrigation well would cut down on the city expense of trucking the water way up to Hawkridge Park. A pump would be on-site that would be turned on to flood the rinks, Haas said.

The well could service a future bathroom facility, Haas said.

Bukkila said the hockey association should contribute to replacing the hockey rink boards at Hawkridge Park when it moves to the east side of the park.

However, she knows that the hockey association’s focus is on completing a rinks project near Andover City Hall.

When faced with the prospect of losing two rinks at Hawkridge Park, the hockey association agreed to help the city construct two hockey rinks and one skating rink across Crosstown Boulevard from Sunshine Park and west of city hall.

The Class 5 aggregate base material for the three rinks is in place. The city utilized material left over from local road projects last year such as the 157th Avenue reconstruction project.

Funds to buy the hockey boards and lights could not be raised by the hockey association, however. The association also wants to construct a warming house by these rinks, past president Tony Howard previously stated.

The rinks by city hall were not flooded this winter because the public works department staff would have had to take the time sloping the edges of the rinks, said City Administrator Jim Dickinson.



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