Cass Park getting major makeover
WOONSOCKET – The Little League field at Cass Park hosted many a local baseball player’s early career but now is just a memory as the city moves forward on its Cass Park improvement plan and the scheduled location of a girls softball field on the site.
The field will be used by the Woonsocket High School girls’ softball team and is part of the city’s plans to bring more athletic facilities closer to the school campus at 777 Cass Ave. and bordering Cass Park.
A tree company and members of the Public Works Department took advantage of Wednesday’s warm weather to take down several large oaks and other species of trees surrounding the former youth league field on the opposite side of Iron Rock Brook where it passes along the park’s parking lot.
Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt said some of the trees taken down were found to be diseased and some were removed to expand the playing area of the planned soft- ball field.
The field’s fencing, backstop, dugout enclosures and benches, and the bleachers for home and visitor team family members had already been removed from the site leaving the landscaping as the next phase of the city-managed project.
“So they took advantage of the good weather to get that work done,” Baldelli-Hunt said of the tree removal.
Joel Mathews, city director of planning and development, and Steven
D’Agostino, director of public works, are overseeing the park field improvement with the help of Dan Belisle, the high school’s girls softball coach, Baldelli-Hunt said.
“The field won’t be ready for the girls softball season but our goal is to have it ready by summer,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
The field work planned will include re-grading the existing field and installing a new infield skin and outfield along with new fencing, dugouts and an equipment storage structure, according to Baldelli-Hunt. Mathews and D’Agostino are also looking into the possibility of using the hillside behind the former backstop area of the field to create something of a stadium seating arrangment making use of the slope of the land, she noted.
Although planned as the new home of the high school girls softball team currently using Cold Spring Park, the new facility will also be available to other groups wanting to play on a city softball field, she noted.
The city has already completed a relocation of the park’s basketball courts from a low lying area off the stone
steps from Cass Avenue on the park’s westerly side to their new home at the site of the former outdoor ice rinks at Cass near the high school.
Landscaping and new fishing access areas were also installed around Cass Pond near the parking lot and the old wooden bridge at the pond dam replaced with a new bridge.
Baldelli-Hunt said the old wooden bridge removed near the ballfield at what is known as a historic wading spot on Iron Rock Brook will also be replaced under the improvement plan.
The city has a master plan for Cass Park that Mathews worked on with a planning group for a number of years and has received funding grants to complete some of the planned changes.
Baldelli-Hunt called the move of the basketball courts to a more visible area of the park one of the improvements already meeting with approval from those who use the park.
“The basketball courts are pretty popular and someone told me that when they went by the other day they counted 35 kids out there playing basketball,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
“It is always rewarding to be able to improved your recreational facilities but it is even more rewarding to see them being used,” she said.