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Potential recreation complex could bring significant economic growth to Upshur County

BUCKHANNON, W.Va. — Though the Upshur County Recreation Complex is still only in the planning stages, the proposed multi-million dollar complex could have a signficant effect on Upshur County.

Shawn Tucker, president of the Upshur County Recreation Complex, said such a complex would serve not only as a entertainment source for community residents but also a large revenue producer for the area.

“The larger components we’re looking at are things that we can have, kind of revenue-producing items, such as youth sports tournaments to a baseball complex or soccer fields because those will be the largest revenue-producing items,” Tucker said. “One of the first things I think we’re going to look at building is an indoor turf-facility or an indoor facility of some kind, and our thought being that then we could have year-round capability. It’s definitely something that’s needed in the county, and there’s nothing else like it around here.”

Tucker said the idea of the Upshur County Recreation Complex traces back to December 2016.

“I met with some of the other officials from the local youth sports organizations and started kicking around the idea of building a complex because one of the issues we all run into regardless of what sport we’re playing is space, being able to have space to do tournaments and those kinds of things,” Tucker said. “We got together and kind of put our heads together of how we want to tackle this problem, and we came up with the non-profit approach that we’re taking.”

Plans for the facility include a swimming pool, an outdoor football/lacrosse field, baseball and softball fields, soccer fields, volleyball, basketball and tennis courts, a dog park, a walking trail and a skate park.

Tucker said the goal is to get as many components as possible to make it something that each member of the community could get use out of.

“If you do just a baseball complex, not everyone in the county is going to be able to use that, so we tried to incorporate as many things as we could into the conceptual plan to get as much support as we could,” he said.

The impact of such a facility, Tucker said is demonstrated by the success Cabell County has seen with the soccer complex in Barboursville.

“Barboursville has a really great soccer facility, and they host a couple big tournaments a year. It’s really a draw to a lot of teams,” he said. “What you run into with youth sports tournaments. is if you can draw teams from around the region and not so much just West Virginia but the surrounding states, you’re bringing a lot of people.”

Those visitors then help the area’s ancillary businesses by staying in the local hotels, eating at the local restaurants and shopping the local stores. Tucker said that type of economic activity can also attract new businesses to the community.

“When you’re trying to recruit businesses to your area, one of the things they look at is, ‘Okay, I’m going to bring my employees to your area. What is there for my family,” he said. “I think this can be a key component in making a good sales presentation for Upshur County to say, ‘While your employees are here working, this is available for their family to use.'”

Many of the county’s athletic fields are in need the upgrade, but Tucker said they are still in relatively good shape.

“I think baseball probably has the best facilities,” he said. “I’m also involved in the soccer board, and we have decent facilities but we don’t have any parking, so we run into space issues when we have more than two teams playing. It’s kind of a nightmare trying to get back to the field and get people in there.”

Though funding is not yet in place for the complex, Tucker said there are many grant opportunities for this type of development. The original budget for the Upshur County Recreation Complex is around $29 billion.

“There’s a lot of different factors that could go into changing that budget, land price and those types of things,” he said. “Really, once we get a site in hand, we can narrow down that estimate and make it more specific to the property that we have.”

The group is currently in the very early stages of negoating a purchase agreement with a landowner. With that possibility in the horizon, Tucker said he’s optimistic given the community support that’s already in place.

“We’ve had really good reaction from everyone we’ve talked to about it,” he said. “I think once we nail down the land issue, we’ll be able to cement that support because then it becomes tangible.”





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