Several Henry County youth baseball teams and a Stockbridge city councilman plan to fight the recent closure of a park they say will leave their community without a local sports field.
Stockbridge City Councilman Elton Alexander, Georgia Showcase Baseball and several other youth baseball teams plan to protest the partial closure last week of Cochran Park because of sinkholes and watery conditions the county says has made the greenspace unsafe.
The protesters, who will rally at the park at 305 East Atlanta Road at 9 a.m. Saturday, said Cochran is the only sports field in Stockbridge and that a plan to relocate the teams to Hidden Valley Park in north Henry County will force parents to travel outside their community for games instead of being able to walk to a local facility.
“Parents will have to transport t-ball aged kids to Hidden Valley from Stockbridge to play on the same fields as teenaged kids,” Alexander said. “This is wrong when Henry County should fix Cochran Park after allowing it to fall into disrepair.”
Henry County officials say crumbling stormwater pipes, sinkholes and a compromised parking lot led them to erect barricades around parking lot and shutter the park's baseball diamonds. Some trails connected to the park were not impacted.
The park has had a long history with water damage, Kenny Morris, assistant director for Parks and Recreation, said. Cochran began as a water conservation area several decades ago, but later updates added sports field. The county has repeatedly repaired and patched different parts of the field over the years, but the infrastructure issues have persisted.
“There is so much water under this property that the fields stay soggy,” Morris said last week in the announcement of the closure.
Alexander, however, accused the county of diverting funds that could have been used to improve Cochran to a new park in Fairview near the home of Henry Commissioner Bruce Holmes, in whose district Cochran is located and who pushed for the closure of Cochran. Holmes has denied the charge.
“I like the new park but you cannot take all the tax money Stockbridge residents pay out of the city and transfer it to a new park while the existing park falls apart,” said Alexander, who said the city has been asking the county to improve the parks for years.
Holmes said the county has offered to give the park to Stockbridge and pay its utilities, but the city has not been interested.
Holmes said the county will look into the feasibility of transforming the greenspace into a dog park and using it to create more trails.
“We need to make it a passive park with greenspace and a gravel walking trail,” said Holmes. “We can renovate the park at minimal cost to the county.”
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