One year out from opening, long-awaited lee county athletic park sees progress

Construction has begun on the building that will serve as the centerpiece between the four new baseball and softball fields at Lee County Athletic Park. Photo by Billy Liggett

By Gordon Anderson

This time next year will mark nearly a full decade since talk of a new sports complex in Lee County really began swirling locally due to its inclusion as an item on then Sanford Mayor Chet Mann’s “Open for Business” agenda.

Although not a city initiative, Mann had challenged area leaders to come together and plan for a sports complex as one of several methods to bolster “quality of life” amenities locally, as well as for the entire community to benefit from the increased sales tax revenue that hosting tournaments for traveling teams could generate.

Lots has transpired since — the placement of a $25 million county bond initiative on the 2020 ballot, the creation of the “Grow Play Succeed” campaign that championed the project to voters, the passage of that bond initiative with almost 59 percent of the vote, a “pause” in planning as the post-COVID economy ballooned cost estimates from the original $25 million figure to more than $70 million, the authorization to re-start planning when inflation started cooling in 2022, the awarding of the project to Sanford Contractors for $26.8 million in September 2023, and, finally, the breaking of ground on the project three months later.

Now, with all of that in the rear view mirror, local leaders are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Lee County Athletic Park is coming together fast. With continued good weather, we could have a completion date by July 2025,” Lee County Commissioner Cameron Sharpe posted to Facebook on June 27.

Aerial image of the progress of the Lee County Athletic Park in July 2024.

That caveat — “with continued good weather” — is important. In early July, County Manager Lisa Minter and Parks and Recreation Director Joseph Keel provided The Rant with a tour of the site and confirmed the project was ahead of schedule at that time. But they opted against making any hard predictions about an opening date (July, as you’ll remember, turned out to be a pretty rainy month). That said, both Minter and Keel were pleased with progress at the park and were confident that 2025 will see its opening.

“When the park opens, the playground will be open that day,” Keel said. “And the flag football league will likely be the first league that plays out here. With the fields, we want to make sure the sod takes so it could be a little longer for those. The last thing we want is to build those fields and then get on them too early and ruin them.”

Keel sees the Lee County Athletic Park in a different light than those leaders who primarily touted its economic and quality of life impacts. For him, it’s absolutely necessary in order for the county to continue to provide recreational opportunities for everyone who wants access to them.

Parks and Recreation Director Joseph Keel, County Manager Lisa Minter, Budget and Management Analyst Ben McQueary and Communications Specialist Hailey Hall provided a walking tour of Lee County Athletic Park in July to show the progress of the sports complex one year out from its expected opening.

“We’re up to 700 kids between baseball, softball and tee ball,” he said. “In 2020 we were at 300, so we’re currently maxed out, which is why it’s so important that we can expand our capacity and have more offerings and not have to turn kids away.”

Ryan Patterson, executive director of Sanford Area Soccer League (SASL) — which will call the sports complex home since it serves as the “unofficial” county soccer league — said his organization is also growing at a rate that its current homes (the Lions Club Fairgrounds and other fields around the county) are also not big enough.

“As we continue to grow — we have doubled in size the last three years — we are outgrowing the current footprint of rectangular fields in Sanford,” Patterson said. “With the loss of the Northview Complex [in the Deep River area] looming, we really do not have any other options except to reduce teams practice times, limit registrations or give teams smaller areas to train on. The new complex alleviates this for us.”

(Above) Computer rendering of Lee County Athletic Park compared to an aerial image from a similar angle taken in July (below).

Just as important, Lee County Athletic Park gives SASL an opportunity to host large-scale tournaments and festivals — a much more difficult task with its current facilities. 

“The new complex will give us a facility to be proud of that can compete with any facility in the state,” he said. “We have already had conversations with North Carolina Youth Soccer Association about the Olympic Development Program coming here to Sanford. This makes sense due to Sanford being truly centered in the state. Currently they train in Winston-Salem or Greensboro, which can be a haul for a kid that lives in Wilmington or Jacksonville. 

“So it’s possible we could land the ODP program as well as State Cups in the future.”

As of the walking tour in early July, the complex was still far from complete, but you don’t have to squint to see the outline taking shape. As you enter off Broadway Road near the intersection with the U.S. 421 Bypass, a short but winding road leads to a traffic circle from which you can see the baseball and softball fields being constructed. 

Crews work in the area of the park that will house a new $1 million playground.

Tall lights surround the fields throughout, and moving south past the ball fields are multiple rectangular pitches that could be used for soccer, football, and even lacrosse. There are roughly 900 parking spaces to accommodate the hundreds of families expected to visit the facility. In a back corner sits an area that Keel calls the “$1 million playground.”

Asked what getting to design a “$1 million playground” is like, Keel said there’s a lot that goes in.

“You want to make sure you have different levels, both different age levels and different contour levels,” he said. “And you want to make sure you have good sight lines, so you make sure parents can see the whole area.”

The Lee County Athletic Park will even have offerings for those who aren’t children or parents. On any given day there will be as many as 10 different food trucks on site — up to three near the baseball and softball fields, five or six near the playground, and two at the soccer fields. Because the park will be open to the public from dawn to dusk, anyone will be able to drop in on any given day and see what’s available to eat.


Large stadium light poles have been installed throughout the Lee County Athletic Park, marking the first official “pieces” of the sports complex as crews begin work on fields and structures. The park is expected to open in the summer of 2025.

“We’re not going to have any concessions,” Keel said. “It’ll all be handled by food trucks. That way, the county doesn’t have to get into hiring people or purchasing a bunch of perishable food. Instead we’ll have agreements in place with food trucks.”

Other implications beyond strictly youth athletics include the potential for the Sanford Spinners — the collegiate summer Old North State League team which has now played four seasons at Tramway Park adjacent to Southern Lee High School – to make the biggest baseball field at the LCAP their home. And in addition, Central Carolina Community College has confirmed that it is now looking at expanding its own athletic offerings in a number of sports.

“With the addition of the sports complex, we are exploring possibly expanding sports, as we can afford to and as we see interest from potential local student athletes,” CCCC President Dr. Lisa Chapman told The Rant. “(We are) giving consideration to soccer, baseball and softball. We always want to ensure academics are our primary focus, but expanding where there is local interest and support is an important consideration with the development of the complex.”

Wendy Bryan, who heads the city’s Tourism Development Authority, isn’t directly involved with the county project, but she’s a key observer and even stakeholder in its success. That’s because it has the potential to change the face of the local tourism industry (something very few in Sanford and Lee County gave much thought to just a few years ago).

Aerial view of the baseball/softball fields at Lee County Athletic Park.

“It definitely has the potential to fill our hotels and maybe even create more demand,” Bryan said, noting that the recent opening of the Home2 Suites hotel in Northview represents the first new hotel room in Sanford since 2009. “And the opportunity to provide all kinds of services to visiting families is tremendous. A family is a very desirable visitor to have.”

Hotel stays in Sanford are taxed to provide funding for the TDA, meaning it’s the visitors who pay for its operations. The bulk of those visitors remain business visitors, but that’s changed as Sanford has gradually become a more and more attractive place to visit — and spend money — thanks to events like Carolina Indie Fest, the annual StreetFest and Fireworks, the downtown Farmer’s Market, and even weekend mini festivals like Strawberry Jammin’, which continue to attract visitors from out of town. 

Bryan said an analysis of tourism numbers from the most recent year available, 2022, shows the average taxpayer saved $105 thanks to sales tax revenue generated by tourism. It was a 10 percent increase from the year prior (2023 tourism numbers will be released this month).

Bryan said she didn’t expect the tourism picture to change overnight due to the fact that the sod fields will take some time before they’re able to be used, particularly for the travel tournaments leaders expect to become a big draw, but she said that given time, the Lee County Athletic Park could help catalyze development in the area.

“We always want people to be thinking about how tourism helps them,” she said. “We have seven hotels, but we don’t have the hotel capacity at the moment to cover all the people that would come in for travel tournaments. So this could be a game changer as far as hotel demand. And even two new (hotels) would be a big increase in our revenue picture.”

The park will also include miles of walking trails, and plans have been floated to locate a gas station and a new hotel near the entrance, further transforming the character of the area.

The site totals 112 acres, 90 of which are being developed in this phase of the project — meaning there’s plenty of room to expand later. That would, of course, take another round of public funding most likely a number of years from now, but some of the options include more fields, more open green space and possibly even an ampitheater/stage.

“You can visualize it on paper all you want,” Keel said. “But being able to get out here and see it taking shape — it’s really mesmerizing.”

So while it’s fair to say local leaders are cautious about being too optimistic about a firm date for the Lee County Athletic Park, it’s also fair to say they’re cautiously optimistic that 2025 will end the decade of waiting for the sports complex and become the year of the sports complex.