When the Northern Kentucky community goes to Tower Park, they may notice something off. A noticeable absence in the place where the soccer field used to be. This year, the community of Fort Thomas has decided to renovate the soccer complex.
Early in the year, the NKY community made a major change in its sports facility at Tower Park. They completely demolished the old soccer complex and are now going to make a whole new complex, with so many benefits and upgrades for the whole community. These include better and more seating, better accessibility, efficient parking, and a very high-quality field, along with many other qualities.
“The objective is to create a renovated space that benefits the entire community,” Director of Operations, Jerry Wissman, said.
To be able to fund this huge object, the city has many partnerships to help pay for this project.
“Seeing St. Elizabeth and Ortho Cincy between the two of them, they’re giving a million dollars over a ten-year span to support the project. And then we were able to work with our legislators in Frankfurt to get five million dollars in grant dollars from our general assembly. Then in addition to that, our school board has dedicated funding dollars toward our facility towards renovating that space,” Superintendent Brian Robinson said.
This project is expected to be finished and open to the public in late summer of 2025. The soccer field will be completed first and will be available for the Highlands soccer teams next season.
“We are hopeful of August 1, so we are very hopeful that we will be able to play our soccer season next season on it. At a minimum, even if it’s just the field that’s available. And if some of the building spaces are still under construction, then that would be what we hope to be a worst-case scenario. That’s the goal,” Robinson said.
As the complex is getting this huge renovation done, there will be a major change in features and improvements compared to the old complex.
“So it would be a male and a female locker room and then they would have events there, and then we have a coach’s office, a space for our athletic trainer that’ll have like the cold bath or the high time and the training table. Then we have a 42 x 42 multi use space that can have dance practice, could have color guard practice, it is really tall, scenes and we do films there, the whole variety of things that type of things, and then some storage,” Robinson said.
Another improvement that this new complex will include is its high-quality safety measures.
“The grain stands, and the approaches to them will be all Americans with Disability Act (ADA) accessible. You know, the viewing experience should be better, with more and larger seating areas. We will have cameras interior and exterior camera systems. We’ll have access control down there. To facilitate approved entry in and out of the facility and hopefully limit the ability of people who shouldn’t get into the end of the facility. We’ll have better access to emergency services in the facility,” Wissman said.
With all of the new features and upgrades that this facility will be getting, they will be able to have multiple sports teams practice on this, as well as host huge tournaments for high school games.
“We’re open to suggestions. We know, obviously, that we’d like to be able to host some of the larger KSA postseason rounds competition We previously weren’t able to. I think it would be a great facility if our band wanted to host a band competition and we’ve gotten interest from a lot of community groups that want to see what we might be open to in terms of other athletic activities like lacrosse that we currently don’t sponsor here. You know, and we got a lot of interest from outside soccer groups,” Wissman said.
With these new renovations being fulfilled at Tower Park, they will benefit the whole NKY community and bring so many people to the park.
“The objective is to create a renovated space that benefits the entire community, not just the athletic programs for Highlands,” Robinson said.
