Monday, February 2, 2009

Southwest Baseball's Aera Park to open in April


Here's some welcome good news: that long-planned mega baseball park in the Southwest is set to open in April. If you recall this is "Aera Park," so named because of Aera Energy's generous donation of $250,000 to help the Southwest Baseball organization realize its dream. (the donation actually came from Kern Community Foundation via funds donated by Aera) Our town is sorely in need of improved facilities for our kids (soccer and baseball most prominently) so this will be a huge boost. There will be eleven baseball diamonds located behind Riverwalk off Jewetta and Stockdale Highway. Rob Noriega, a local attorney and VP of Southwest Baseball, filled me in over lunch and said Aera Park will be city owned but that his organization will run it on contract for 15 years. Southwest Baseball, which serves about 1,500 kids, will get priority and other groups can use the facilities by scheduling through Noriega's group. Three folks have been working diligently to make this happen: Rob, Aera communications chief Susan Hersberger and Duane Keathley, president of the baseball group.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a great improvement for our city! I would have loved having high quality baseball fields to play on when I was growing up in Bako. I'm glad that my son will have a great ballpark to enjoy once he can hold a baseball.