Lee County approves athletic park fee schedule, authorizes two park hires

The Lee County Board of Commissioners on March 17 approved a fee schedule for the Lee County Athletic Park and authorized immediate hires for two supervisory positions — a park operations supervisor and a maintenance supervisor — to manage the August 2025 opening and oversee transition from the project contractor to county maintenance.

Joseph Kiel, presenting the Parks and Recreation proposal, said the fees and priority schedule were developed by Parks and Rec staff and the Lee County Parks and Rec Advisory Board after comparing regional sports complexes. “From an operational standpoint, we're we're looking at operational costs just south of $600,000. And with these fees in place, we're looking at, expecting to bring in around a hundred thousand dollars. So we're looking at 18% cost recovery,” Kiel said during the meeting.

Kiel described a multi-tier fee structure intended to be flexible for hourly practices, seasonal/monthly rentals and daily tournament bookings. Examples discussed at the meeting include: $60 per hour to rent an individual synthetic multipurpose field; a full-month rental for a synthetic field priced at $6,000 (an average of about $24 per hour using the staff assumption of 160 hours per month); a typical grass-field monthly seasonal fee of $3,500 (about $11 per hour under the same 160-hour assumption); and higher daily tournament rates, which staff said could reach $1,500 a day.

Priority scheduling will place Parks and Recreation use first, followed by non‑profit organizations, and the county plans to advertise public-access windows for monthly renters (for example, advertised public hours such as 10 a.m.–2 p.m.). Carolina Football Club public commenter Sean O'Connor told commissioners he and his group found the proposed pricing and the prioritization list “fair” and said they were “incredibly excited to become a good standing partner with Lee County.”

Commissioners debated staffing the facility in-house versus contracting operations. Kiel said the county had surveyed other complexes and found most operate with in-house staff; he also said contracting typically costs more. Commissioners asked staff to provide comparative contract-versus-in-house cost figures for future budget consideration.

The board also approved the immediate hire of the two supervisory positions; staff told commissioners the hires for the remainder of the current fiscal year will be funded from investment earnings on the athletic-park project and that additional positions for full operations are included in the 2025–26 Parks and Rec budget request. The fee schedule and the two immediate hires were approved by voice vote at the meeting.

Other operational notes included plans for concession food-truck stations (operators would apply and pay an upfront fee to be approved by Parks and Rec), use of a booking/officials RFQ for referees and umpires (previously the county had one respondent to an RFQ), and contingency planning to avoid monopolization of seasonal rentals (staff said they would “flip-flop” long-term monthly allocations to ensure multiple organizations have access).