On Tuesday, the Oakley City Council is set to discuss the idea of including a polo field as part of the plan for the park.
If the council decides to go forward with a polo field, it sits at 300-yards by 160-yards and would change the concept plan previously approved. The park is located at the end of Jersey Island Road.
Within the two drawings provided in the staff report, baseball fields would be reduced from 3 fields down to 2. It would eliminate most of the open meadow, picnic areas, concession/restrooms shade structures, and other changes would need to be made. In a second drawing, it would keep all three ball-fields, but would lose the open meadow and other park features.
Currently, the Oakley Regional Park is sitting on 55-acres which includes ballpark fields, trails, picnic areas, playground and the restoration of the Gilbert House. It will also include supportive amenities such as parking, access roads, and restrooms. The cost sits at an estimated $60 million.
According to the agenda, the item comes before the council as Mayor Sue Higgins was approached by Oakley resident, Claude-Alix Bertrand, who was an International Polo Player and who is currently a Haitian ambassador for UNESCO, a sector of the United Nations which aims to provide international collaboration through education, science and culture. The Ambassador has toured the regional park site and believes there may be interest to develop a portion of the park site with a polo field.
The purpose of this work session is to see if the City Council has a desire to potentially locate a polo field at the regional park site. If there is interest, the Ambassador will then see if he can generate any financial commitments from polo tournament sponsors that in turn could be used to construct the polo field.
For the full agenda: click here
The Oakley City Council will meet next on Sept 14 beginning at 6:30 pm.
Editors Note-Background:
This project has been in the works since 2002 when the Dutch Slough Memorandum of Understanding occurred with the idea of a 55-acre community park—this includes the 27-acre Burroughs Property and the 8-acre parcel to the north end of Jersey Island Road.
Back on October 21, 2018 the restoration of the wetlands at Dutch Slough broke ground which will transform 1,187 acres around the proposed park.
Previous Staff Reports on this item:
- Dec. 31, 2018 Agenda – click here
- Jan. 8, 2019 Agenda – click here
12 comments
Just when I thought Oakley couldn’t get any more dumb they bring this to the agenda. A simple no to the resident would have been good. If anything, Oakley should be adding a 4th baseball field and at least 2 soccer fields. Pay attention to the need in Oakley, not these dumb wants.
This is simple, Oakley has plenty of parks already. You can have open space around the border along the water, horse trail around the property and fill it with playing fields in the middle. Create a draw, not a poor mans East Bay Regional Park.
Will Oakley now be renting horses to play polo? Are you kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oakley you have one shot at this. Completely tear down this idiotic design and do something useful with state of the art sports complex with at least 4-6 baseball fields, turf soccer fields, lights and other features. I like the idea above about horse trail around the complex but stop making this park like every other park out here. Make it a draw and that is with a sports complex.
A polo field gets a vote but disc golf gets an automatic no via email. What a joke.
Wow. I don’t know a single person who plays Polo in this community – I’ve never even seen a Polo game in my life. Yet we have hundreds of Oakley kids currently playing baseball, soccer and flag football who have to largely use Brentwood fields because Oakley has so few available, and especially so few that can support more than one activity at a time. We don’t have a single city soccer field with lights, and we have no ability to host local tournaments with the current field situation so we instead have to travel out of town to tournaments that other cities profit from in Brentwood (Sunset), Ripon, Manteca, Walnut Creek etc. local youth sports have been appropriately invested in. This revision is definitely not representative of our community and is only slowing down the process when we should be moving forward with the original plan. Sounds like this Ambassador is very out of touch with our community, so our community needs to show up to make sure this doesn’t go through.
The plan was and is for a 55 acre community park. Putting in a Polo field which is approximate to
six soccer fields, or 9 football fields, That is about ten acres not accounting for the extra safety zone’s
(run-off area). It would take about a third of the park space accounting for the extra saftey zone (run-off
that surrounds the initial 160 x 300 yards, plus stables, and other facilities that would be needed.
Move on.
Polo Fields!!!?? Are you Fn kidding!! WOW!!
How about more gas stations or cigarette stores?? Maybe ANOTHER storage facility??!!!
The morons in these seats are getting dumber by the project!!
Polo fields?! Are you kidding me!? Leave the design the way it was approved and stop wasting time and money!
I saw a polo match once, down in Santa Barbara, and I got a chance to talk to some of the players.
One gentleman, some CEO of an oil company, was telling me he was from Houston, and he had flown into SB with his wife, while the semi hauling the 12 horses for his team followed behind. They apparently have to change out their horses every few minutes because they run them so hard. I also found it amusing that he actually had a nice young Hispanic guy lacing his boots on him. Then I noticed his wife was wearing a diamond ring that was about the size of a 9-volt battery.
Hey, if I could just drive over to Oakley and watch a show like that then let the City of Oakley have a hand at it.
Just hoping tough that Oakley realizes Santa Barbara has a lot more of a draw for visitors, including an airport a few miles away, that had at least a 100 private jets parked there.
Oakley needs more schools for all the new children your bringing in with all the new houses your building! Also Grocery stores! There’s nothing on West Cypress!!! Come on! Let’s use some common sense here!!! These people need the basics not a polo field!! What a way to waste money!
The “Ambassador” is wrong about local interest in polo and the city is insane to even consider it. The open space makes MUCH more sense and will benefit the most residents. Stop catering to the demands of one party.
Even though I like the idea of adding polo fields to Oakley (after all, the horses bring a small town feel), I do not like the way this design. It is going to eliminate the beneficial aspects of the park. For instance, building it would get rid of shade structures. The weather here is hot the majority of the year, so shade is a must to keep residents comfortable. The open meadow brings out the charming countryside feel that symbolized Oakley’s past. If they went with their first design, one of the baseball fields will be gone. As April said, there are so many children in Oakley that play baseball. However, Oakley has so few fields that children often have to commute to another city to play. It’s bad when a community has a population of well over 40,000 yet there are so few activities and amenities within city limits that people have to commute somewhere else to even attend a child’s extracurricular activity. Also, there are more important projects they could be focusing on such as adding different types of schools (such as private schools, charter schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, and adult education schools), adding jobs to attract young professionals and lower the amount of commuters (animation studio, headquarters for a new type of software, etc), adding a medical center that provides both physical and mental health services, preserving historic buildings, and adding attractions (museums, theme parks, water parks, theaters, bowling alleys, etc). I am perfectly okay with Oakley adding a polo field within city limits (it is an attraction), but they need a different design with this. Creekside Park has a barren space right next to it. Maybe they should build it there.
Comments are closed.