Earlier this year, the city of Jackson embraced the growing phenomenon of “travel ball” in hopes that its explosive growth can add to the city’s tax income.

Travel ball is a generic term for any youth baseball team that travels to and plays in weekend tournaments during summer months.

With a mix of $3 million in private donations, $3 million in city money budgeted for recreation and $5 million in new borrowing, the city plans to open the 17-field Jackson Sportsplex in the fall of 2006. The field will operate as a city park during the week and will be used for tournaments mostly on weekends.

The fields are projected to bring in about $1.3 million in annual revenue, yielding $300,000 a year in income after expenses. Additionally, the tournaments are projected to bring around 300,000 people to town each year, giving hotel and sales taxes a boost.

Some in Jackson—mostly on talk radio—have criticized the venture as being a poor investment that could saddle taxpayers with even more sports-related debt. More than half of the $8 million city-built minor league baseball park has yet to be paid off and its tenant, the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx, have been drawing so poorly the team looked to move earlier this year.

Perhaps of greater concern is the threat of a similar project in the area draining off projected revenues. Memphis satellite city Cordova, located about an hour’s drive from Jackson, is set to open a similar complex this fall, $8 million First Tennessee Fields, aimed in part at attracting the same travel ball revenues. Both new complexes will compete with an established complex in Southaven, Mississippi, just outside of Memphis, which currently attracts teams from nearly 30 states.

Sportsplex supporters say the three facilities will complement each other rather than compete with each other by serving different areas of the country and different types of tournaments.

“We’ll be working with Southaven and we hope to work with Cordova to host tournaments for different classifications,” says Kyle Spurgeon, Jackson Energy Authority vice president of business development and a leader of the citizen group that pushed for the project. “If we all work together we’ll all do much better.”

Time will tell how successfully the various facilities split the travel ball pie. For now supporters in Jackson are focused on how the park’s promise of increased traffic has already spurred retail, restaurant and hotel/motel interest in the largely undeveloped I-40 interchange where it is located—right next door to the minor league stadium.

Courtesy of H&M Construction