This article has been corrected from a previous version.
SANTA ROSA BEACH — A new sports complex and recreation area could be coming to South Walton County.
County officials met with about 40 residents and interested parties on Monday evening to discuss a new facility to serve the southern part of the county.
It was the first public meeting on the prospect and will likely be one of many as officials gauge interest in building and financing the project.
“We have no preconceived notions of what it looks like or where it is or how it is going to be paid for,” said Larry Jones, the county's special projects coordinator, during the meeting. “As we move along, we want to do the things that are important to you and the children of South Walton.”
People who attended the meeting voted for the top three facilities they would like to see built. Multipurpose fields, baseball and softball fields, a skate park and a walking trail with fitness stations were the most popular.
Commissioner Cindy Meadows requested that county officials look into expanding recreational opportunities in South Walton, which she said has been a growing concern as the permanent population in the area has continued to increase.
The county’s youth population has been growing rapidly. Two years after the school district built a new middle school and a year after moving fifth-graders out of elementary schools to accommodate growth, primary schools in the county are again struggling with overcrowding. That struggle seems to have carried over to available recreational fields at Helen McCall Park.
Ron Romano, a children’s sport coach, said the park can’t meet the demand of children’s sports teams and the fields are often overused. He said youth football teams have to wait three weeks after the start of their season this year before they have access to the fields.
Meadows said developer MC Davis has proposed selling a large parcel of land east of County Road 395 and north of U.S. Highway 98 to the county to use for a new recreational facility.
“I think if you go all around the country you cannot find another area even remotely as affluent as this area without a first-class recreational facility,” Davis said after the meeting.
He said he has the parcel available, but whether the county decides to move forward with the project and purchase his land or any other land will depend on public opinion and research into the needs of the community.
The facility could be designed as a tourist draw, or it could be used to serve the needs of locals, Meadows said.
There are companies that can be hired to build a facility that will draw people from out of town to visit, and those companies sometimes even pay the county to run it, said Jim Bagby, director of the county’s Tourist Development Council.
Most people who spoke out at the meeting seemed to agree the facility should serve the needs of locals over those of tourists.
“We’ve got to give something for these people to do south of the bay. It doesn’t need to be something where we are just bringing tourists in here to rent the fields and they rent the fields all the time and then the locals can’t use them,” said Suzanne Harris, who lives in South Walton. “We’re not just trying to bring in tourists but trying to get people to live here permanently, and that’s what this should be for.”
Funding prospects include the county’s budget, ad valorem taxes, a municipal services benefit unit (MSBU) or bed taxes.
Bagby, who helped Jones facilitate the meeting, advised that if bed taxes are used to build the facility there would have to be a significant component designed to draw tourists there because of the restrictions on how bed taxes can be spent.
“As a parent I agree, I want more facilities for my kids, but the issue with using bed tax as a source of revenue is that once you do that, my responsibility is not as a parent, is not as your friend, but as executive director of the TDC to fill that facility every day I can, to recoup the investment that was made with those funds,” he said during the meeting. “If you use the bed tax money, the priority becomes getting visitors into that facility.”
CORRECTION: The position of Larry Jones was incorrect in a previous version of this article. He is the county's special projects coordinator.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Lauren Sage Reinlie at 850-315-4443 or lreinlie@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenRnwfdn.