Upgrades planned for the Founders Park baseball field, including the proposed installation of artificial turf to replace grass, received school board backing at a June 24 meeting at Coral Shores High School.
The same night, a village workshop at Founders Park heard a number of residents providing their take on an estimated $6.1 million project led by the school district. What began as a discussion surrounding a master plan for the whole park eventually zeroed in on the proposed plans for the ballfield, with input from residents.
Specifically, school board members unanimously supported a conceptual drawing by Keystar Inc. detailing various enhancements to a field owned by the village. It serves as the home to the Coral Shores baseball program. Last season, the varsity baseball team finished 19-5 and won a district title.
Plans show the field, currently composed of grass and dirt, being replaced by artificial turf. The conceptual drawing also shows an 800-square-foot, two-story press box and concession facility and elevated aluminum grandstands with covering. A home dugout would be constructed, to include a player locker room, coach’s office, space for umpires and team storage. A new dugout would also be built for visiting teams.
The backstop and batter boxes would be moved up roughly 22 feet to address issues of foul balls potentially reaching traffic on U.S. 1.
School district and village officials agreed no trees will be removed as part of the upgrades.
Also, none of the proposed improvements will proceed without support from the Village of Islamorada. Meetings held June 24 initiated a process of consideration, input and approvals from the district and village.
“This is the first step. It has to go to many meetings and we made it very clear it’s a partnership,” said Village Manager Ron Saunders to kick off the village’s public input session for the ballfield improvements, as requested by council members. “The school board and village council must agree before anything happens. Nothing can happen without agreement.”
Pat Lefere, school district executive director of planning and operations, told school board members approval of a conceptual plan would lead to a more detailed schematic plan, development design and construction documents.
“Each step would require approval from both the school board and the village,” Lefere said.
Artificial turf a key topic
The move is expected to address a rough playing surface that’s caused player injuries in past years. Doug Mientkiewicz played 12 seasons as a major league baseball player. A World Series winner with the Boston Red Sox in 2004, Mientkiewicz served as a coach for Coral Shores baseball for the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
During the village workshop, he said his son “blew his knee out” playing on the baseball field doing nothing more than running. His son ended up transferring to Key West to play baseball as Mientkiewicz said he wouldn’t put him back on the field to jeopardize his playing career.
He also alluded to councilman Steve Friedman’s son’s injury, in which he broke his collarbone while jogging in the outfield.
“I’ve been all over the world to play baseball, the United States, Nicaragua, Cuba, Japan. … That field (at Founders) ranks up with a third-world country,” he said. “We’d love for it to be natural grass. If you’re willing to spend half a million dollars on a grounds crew, so be it. The only way to do it is turf.”
A transition to turf would also eliminate the intense maintenance needed for natural grass in a harsh Florida Keys environment. Mientkiewicz and Tony Hammon, coach for Coral Shores baseball, both mentioned the many hours put into preparing the field for play. Mientkiewicz said he had the Minnesota Twins ground crew come down to do the mound and home plate area the correct way.
“I was told by the guys who do that for a living that it won’t last because of the coral rock underneath it,” Mientkiewicz said. “I know if professionals can’t maintain it, it makes it really hard.”
Rich Russell, former Coral Shores athletic director, said upgrades to the field won’t only be for the baseball program.
“I don’t like the idea of this being called a baseball field. It is a multi-use facility,” he said. “Hundreds of kids are playing flag football — there are 140 kids in this area playing — lacrosse, baseball, soccer, softball, girls and boys programs alike.”
Russell added the field would also supplement events held at Founders Park that couldn’t be held on grass.
The mother of two young baseball players, Lauren Solis, said investing into the park to make it a place for kids to play sports is the community’s best bet.
“We are traveling six days a week to Key Largo because we go to Key Largo park to play baseball. It’d be great if we could use it (Founders Park ballfield) for Little League.”
Project costs prompt discussion
The school board agreed to allocate $5 million in its capital budget for ballfield improvements. Some school board members shared concerns over footing a majority of the project costs. Mindy Conn, school board chairwoman, expressed her concerns over the investment in a facility not owned by the district. Board member Darren Horan said he hopes the village might contribute to the project.
Upon hearing comments over the village contributing, Islamorada Mayor Sharon Mahoney said toward the end of the village workshop that “it’s a big part of the decision.”
“With times changing down here and the school clearly to capacity, why doesn’t the school board look at buying a piece of property for other things other than the baseball field? Look at big tracts of land, most are gone,” Mahoney said. “Where does Coral Shores go when they don’t have another property besides this park? My concern is the future for this park.”
Islamorada resident Jaime Engel said the village, and not the school district, should pay the money to get the baseball field back in top-notch condition. Engel also referenced survey results regarding Founders Park which found a majority of residents wanted improvements to existing amenities, not new construction.
“They want to preserve the park and not develop it,” she said.
A partnership between the village and school district for field use dates back to 2001. The pact has allowed the school district to pay for field improvements including resurfacing and new fencing. The agreement also outlined maintenance of the field, with the school district tending to the playing surface during season and the village taking over outside of the season.
If all approvals are garnered, the work could begin after the 2026 baseball season.
Some residents question village’s inclusion
Former school board member Ed Davidson noted the repeated broken promises in keeping the village and its residents included throughout the process. A community meeting held in March 2024 was the last substantive discussion heard from school officials and residents who voiced input that evening. At the time, the school board had awarded the design and construction of the ballfield upgrades to a contractor. There were no formal designs for the project, but renditions by the contractor were circulating.
Since then, Davidson said, the citizens have had very few briefings and “almost no say in the past two-and-a-half years since the first bid was processed by the school board without consulting Islamorada citizen owners of the park.”
“This is now the second design-build contract — it’s a contract, folks — already authorized without Islamorada approval,” Davidson. “Lots of people in this game responsible for the lack of participation regard this as a rubber-stamp done deal.”
He added one of the larger problems surrounding the project is the design committee, which he said is composed of 14 public officials, calculating in detail how to spend the $6.1 million.
Lower Matecumbe resident Sue Miller said the village was promised workshops. She noted the need for all sides to come together to figure out what’s best for the village and its park.
“Why can’t we be adults and sit down at a table and talk out what our differences are, instead of having one side of the room cheering one speaker and another side of the room cheering for another speaker,” she said.
Lefere, of the school district, noted the criticism received when they had no conceptual plan during the March 2024 meeting. Following that meeting, Lefere said, the project “kind of died for several reasons.”
“We’re essentially picking up where we left off back in March of last year,” Lefere said. “This time we have a conceptual plan to share that we were criticized for not having last time.”
Lefere added the conceptual plan is the first of four steps, of which all need support from the school board and village council.
The school district’s conceptual plan is expected to go before the village’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, which next meets Thursday, July 10.
