WORCESTER COUNTY, Md.- Just west of Stephen Decatur High School is where the 95+ acre sports complex is expected to go.
Back in April, Worcester county commissioners voted 4-3 to approve the spot for the sports complex. In the months since, the county has been trying to find ways to fund the purchase of the land.
The contract was signed between the county and the previous owner of the land before public hearings were scheduled, which commission president Joseph Mitrecic said he had to get done or he would risk losing the land.
"Until we had a contract on the property, there was nothing to have a public hearing about," Mitrecic said. "You can’t have a public hearing over a supposed piece of property somewhere. It has to be under contract."
But Vincent dePaul Gisriel Jr. of the People for Fiscal Responsibility says it should not have been done that way.
"The public notice suggested that we would have the opportunity to come to talk about the proposed purchase of the land when in fact the public hearing was held on April 19th," Gisriel said. "Two weeks after the contract was signed."
The price for just the land is $7.1 million.
Mitrecic says that having the sports complex in Berlin will be very welcoming to families and especially kids who will enjoy it.
"They’ll be a playground inside the sports complex for kids to come and play, walking paths for people, and also this will help we can tie it in with the school and put in some practice fields for them," Mitrecic said.
But Gisriel says the enjoyable benefits are outweighed by the traffic nightmares he thinks this will cause
"We’re concerned that whether the state highway would even authorize such an ingress or egress off of (Route) 50," Gisriel said. "If that’s the case, it puts the most of the traffic to the south of here off Flower Street which isn’t designed to handle the kind of traffic that a tournament would bring."
On November 8 during the general election, there will be a public question on the ballot asking the public to weigh in on whether a portion of the project's development should be paid for with a bond.