Park Face-Lift Is a Team Effort
The soccer fields at Conejo Creek Park south are a mess. The ground is bumpy, the turf is dug up and the chalked boundary lines are barely visible.
“There is like no grass,” soccer player Wendy Weissberg, 14, said as she sat on the sidelines, watching her Westlake High School teammates compete. The field is “really hard and it’s all dirt. Sometimes the dirt gets in your eyes and you can’t see.”
Simi Valley parent Kathy Penn has safety concerns. “If you have the kids playing soccer and running over the potholes, there’s all kinds of potential for injury.”
A baseball diamond for the Little Leaguers who visit the park is nonexistent.
But conditions should soon improve at the 53-acre park in Thousand Oaks--site of the annual Conejo Valley Days carnival.
In May, the Conejo Recreation and Park District is expected to begin the first phase of a four-year plan to renovate and increase the number of soccer fields at the popular park at Janss Road and California 23. From 8,000 to 10,000 soccer players and spectators use the park on weekends.
The project, estimated to cost more than $3.5 million, will include new turf, lighting, permanent restrooms, irrigation and drainage systems and an 800-space parking lot.
A full-size Little League field will be built, and the nine existing soccer fields will be reconfigured to make room for three new ones. Portable aluminum bleachers will allow seating wherever it’s needed in the park.
District officials say more fields are required as the city’s population grows and competition for available land grows fierce.
“Land is a precious commodity in Thousand Oaks,” said park board member Joe Gibson, who is also president of the Conejo Valley Little League. “The ability for the park district to go out and purchase new land is almost nil. So we have to look at what existing land we have, and how we can best use it.”
Parking spaces are needed because a paved lot owned by the Conejo Unified School District is set to be developed into a satellite campus for Moorpark College.
About 3,000 kids ages 5 to 18 make up the local American Youth Soccer Organization’s 317 teams and use the park’s fields for weekday practices and Saturday games. At least 100 kids were placed on a waiting list over the last year because there aren’t enough fields, said Bill Buratto, a Thousand Oaks resident hired by the soccer league to help raise money and write grants for the project.
With new fields, the American Youth Soccer Organization could increase its membership by 1,000 players.
A baseball field at the park will give the Conejo Valley and Thousand Oaks Little League groups a place to play. This will eliminate the need to vie for space at Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks high schools, where students often use the diamonds for after-school practice and games.
As the biggest user of the fields, the youth soccer organization plans to raise $1 million for the project. So far, it has raised $200,000.
Other groups are also helping out. Conejo Valley Little League has raised about $95,000 for a baseball diamond to be named after Amgen Inc., which donated $50,000 toward its installation. The Conejo Valley Days organization has raised $20,000.
The $1-million first phase will include installing the baseball field and three soccer fields on the south end of the park, along with drainage and irrigation systems. Work is expected to be completed by late fall.
The nine existing soccer fields will be renovated each year in phases. Three fields will be closed at a time for installation of new turf and drainage and irrigation systems. “It takes five months to grow sports turf so it’s ready to be played on,” said Loren Pluth, the district’s senior park development planner.
When those fields are reopened the following season, three other fields will be closed for improvements. All 12 fields should be completed by summer 2006.