Pictured is the proposed St. Louis Steamers Soccer Club park in Columbia.

The Columbia City Council’s Committee of the Whole heard from a representative of the St. Louis Steamers Soccer Club on Monday night about a proposition for a two-field turf soccer park in the bottoms near the Hampton Inn.

“(Soccer clubs) want turf over here because their growth is coming from the metro east,” said Jason Glover, a Columbia resident and representative of the St. Louis Steamers Soccer Club.

The proposed development would feature two artificial turf soccer fields, a concession stand, a destination playground and watershed area.

“This isn’t just a soccer park,” Glover said. “We want it to be used by the entire community and serve those needs,” Glover said.

The estimated cost of the entire project is about $1.97 million. Of that, approximately $400,000 would be covered through in-kind donations of goods and services, including $150,000 worth of site preparation by Luhr Brothers and nearly $100,000 worth of electrical work by Electrico. Just more than $500,000 of the construction costs are potentially eligible for tax increment financing, city administrator Jimmy Morani said.

“The rest of the remaining gap would have to be funded and there is no money in the (city’s) general fund for that,” Morani said. “You’re talking about a million-dollar gap that needs to be made up.”

“We feel the community and the school district could both benefit from this project,” Glover said at the meeting.

The turf fields could be used by the high school band for practice, or as an overflow for school activities, and would include open time slots for public scheduling, Glover added.

St. Louis Youth Soccer Association and St. Louis Scott Gallagher Soccer Club have both committed rental of the fields for games and tournaments during the spring and fall soccer seasons, according to Glover.

“Whatever is not eligible (for TIF) we’re going to have to raise the money privately through fundraisers,” said developer Joe Koppeis, who is actively working with the St. Louis Steamers to bring the park to Columbia. “If they can’t come up with enough private funds to pay the non-eligible portions, obviously it’s not going to happen. But I think they can. I feel pretty strongly about that.

“The biggest issue seems to be the school board and everybody’s fear of using TIF money for a park as opposed to giving it back to the school district or the taxing district,” Koppeis said.

Local hotels, restaurants and Columbia’s Main Street merchants are among the beneficiaries if the soccer park would see fruition. But it wouldn’t just be local businesses.

“I spoke with (Columbia School District Superintendent Gina) Segobiano about the school’s support… and she was very excited about the potential,” Koppeis said. “One of the things that Dr. Segobiano said is they’re landlocked where they are and it would certainly be very useful for them to have a field that would be available to them regardless of the weather. We have not sat down formally with the school board. We plan on doing that very soon, but I’m 100 percent certain that we’ll have 100 percent of their support.”

Additionally, the fields would be available for public rental for large-scale events as well as for use by local sports leagues. Since club soccer is broken into two 13-week seasons − one in the spring and another in the fall − there would potentially be plenty of opportunities for other organizations to take advantage of them.

“The concept was, initially when we were talking about it, that the city wouldn’t have any ongoing expenses from the park,” Koppeis said. “It would have to support itself and not be a debt or an obligation of the city.”

A possible hurdle includes strict building restrictions since the fields would be built in a floodplain.

“I think there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity and we want to gather all of those different components and figure out how to mesh them into this park so that it’s not just a soccer park. We want it to be used by the entire community and serve everybody’s needs,” Koppeis said.

“For all of us here, every issue that comes to us, what it all boils down to is, it’s all about financing, it’s about budgeting,” alderman Mary Ellen Niemietz said.

The city council and St. Louis Steamers will continue their discussions to explore the feasibility of building this soccer park, with the contribution of additional funds by the Steamers, Morani said.

The council also heard from Columbia attorney Arlie Traughber about an annexation amendment for a proposed subdivision off Rueck Road adjacent to Brellinger.

The Walnut Ridge subdivision would be constructed on property purchased in the early 2000s by Pangea Development Co. In 2007, the city approved a subdivision plat that would have included 48 R-2 lots.

The amendment presently on the table would allow the new developer to build 63 homes on the same plot of land, with about one-third of the parcels smaller than the 25,000 square feet demanded by R-2 zoning. The developer is also asking for a variance to construct 30-foot-wide streets instead of 36 feet wide.

Members of the city council expressed concern with the density of lots and lack of recreational amenities in the new development compared to what the council had originally approved.

These concerns were echoed by several property owners in the Brellinger subdivision as well as Brellinger developer Dennis Brand.

“It’s going to go back to the planning commission,” Morani said. “They will work with the developer to try to develop a new plan that reflects the intention of the (city’s) comprehensive plan more closely.”