The Town of Holly Springs purchased a portion of a 62-acre tract of land, located between North Main Street and the NC 55 Bypass and designated for use as a fill-dirt mining site for the South Wake Landfill, in order to develop a multi-use sports and park complex. The Town envisioned the complex supporting a variety of youth and adult athletic programs, including baseball, softball, soccer, tennis, and lacrosse, and providing a home to the Holly Springs Salamanders, a Coastal Plains League summer collegiate baseball team. The complex would also offer space and equipment rentals and host concerts and events to bring residents and visitors together.
WithersRavenel is providing surveying, planning, engineering, landscape architecture, and construction administration services to develop a 42-acre recreational complex, including a 133,850 SF, 1,800-seat multi-sport artificial turf stadium; 183,000 SF of artificial turf designated for two lighted soccer fields; eight 78′ United States Tennis Association (USTA) tennis courts; four U-8 tennis courts; greenway trails along Little Branch Stream; parking; and athletic field and safety lighting. Future amenities include a gymnasium/community center, playgrounds, and potential Miracle League baseball field.
The multi-sport stadium can host one baseball, football, or soccer game at a time; the soccer fields can host four U10 soccer games, four U12 soccer games, two 11 vs. 11 soccer games, or two lacrosse games at a time. Accommodating different sports and different levels of play is accomplished through the use of both solid turf lines and tick marks. The facilities are arranged to achieve the best possible adjacencies and appropriate solar orientations for the fields.
Beneath this complex lies a game-changing secret: an innovative stormwater management system designed by WithersRavenel to use the artificial turf of the multi-sport stadium, Miracle League baseball field, and two soccer fields as stormwater control measures. During rainfall, water penetrates the turf, which acts as a filter, and collects in an underground gravel retention area; the majority of the underdrains discharge to a stormwater detention pond that serves other portions of the site, while the underdrain for the multi-sport field discharges to a level spreader and filter strip. WithersRavenel also designed the complex to minimize impacts to the Town of Holly Springs’ Cape Fear riparian buffers.
WithersRavenel coordinated with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to accommodate the future widening of North Main Street as well as a proposed superstreet connection between North Main Street and the NC 55 Bypass. This foresight will allow the NCDOT to make traffic improvements that alleviate congestion without sacrificing any of the new facilities or requiring costly redesigns to the planned roadways.
In addition, WithersRavenel designed an underpass through a highway culvert to allow pedestrians and cyclists on the greenway adjacent to the site to safely cross under North Main Street. This structure, which was designed to minimize impacts to the surrounding area, represents the harmony between man-made and natural landscapes that is present throughout the complex.