Sedalia Park Board Awards $2.6M Baseball Stadium Bid to PCE

During a special seven-minute meeting of the Sedalia Park Board on Thursday, a bid was accepted from Professional Contractors and Engineers (PCE) for the Liberty Park Stadium Improvement project.

The amount of the bid was nearly $2.6 million.

Parks & Rec Director Amy Epple said the money involved is a match grant.

PCE is based out of Columbia and was the lowest bid that was submitted for the project.

Epple noted that about 70 to 80 percent of PCE's contractors for the baseball stadium project are local companies.

There were several alternates or options included with the bids, due to budget constraints.

“There's a few things that we don't have the money for, we just have a lot of other expenses, so we weren't able to take all of the alternates. But we did take the restroom alternate for $15,200, and the new roofing and guttering alternate for $107,000,” Epple told KSIS following the meeting.

“Then we also approved a deduct for $42,210, it's just the turf and the outfield. We're still turfing the outfield,” Epple explained. “it's just a different product. This deduct gives us what we really need, and we really don't need anything too fancy. We are still $8,620 over the budget, and so Park Board tonight approved paying that to pay that difference, and that's with the alternates and everything.”

Work is scheduled to begin Wednesday, Aug. 7, which promoted the special meeting last Thursday. The last event for the season at Liberty Stadium, a free movie, was on Friday at the Sandlot, along with three or four food trucks.

When this latest project by PCE is done, there still remains work to be done at the stadium, namely restrooms and locker rooms for the players and umpires. All it takes is money. About $115,000 for that portion of it.

The parking lot will be the last piece of the remodeling puzzle, and that won't be completed until spring or next fall, once all the other construction is totally done, Epple stated, and that's by design to keep from damaging the newly-finished lot by large, heavy-duty construction equipment.

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Epple noted that SFCC will be using Centennial Park for their practices instead of Liberty Park while construction is ongoing.

In addition to State Fair, three Smith-Cotton teams utilize Liberty Stadium, as well as two teams from Sacred Heart, three American Legion ball teams and the Bombers. The Sedalia Bombers are a summer collegiate baseball team that competes in the MINK League involving traveling teams from Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.

That's 10 teams that use Liberty Stadium over the course of a season, in addition to Kaysinger Conference teams from Northwest, Tipton, La Monte, Cole Camp, etc.

“We have a lot of smaller area teams that reach out to Parks & Rec, asking to use the facility on a rental basis to get games in for a variety of reasons, Epple noted, adding that from April to the end of July, the schedule at Liberty Park Stadium is packed, with very little wiggle room for last-minute changes.