New baseball field on deck in Cary for future high school in Morrisville
A baseball field to be used by the public and a future high school could be coming to Cary’s Mills Park.
The town of Cary and the Wake County Public School System have agreed to study the feasibility of a joint-use project over the next six months.
The field that would be used by a high school slated to open in Morrisville in 2027 on 34-acres on Wake Technical Community College’s Research Triangle Park campus.
Junior varsity and varsity baseball teams would use the field during the spring season on Monday through Friday until 6 p.m. and on game days until as late as 7 p.m.
WCPSS proposed joining Cary because the new high school in Morrisville is close to Mills Park. Currently, Morrisville, the town next to Cary, has no high school and high school students there attend schools in Cary.
While there is space to construct the high school in Morrisville, there is not enough land to build the necessary athletic facilities and fields, according to the proposal.
Future Morrisville High School
In April, the town of Morrisville entered into a partnership with WCPSS to build the new high school on Wake Tech’s RTP campus.
The college sold the 34 acres for $3.7 million to WCPSS and allowed Morrisville to lease about 17 acres for a park.
Cary Town Council member Jennifer Robinson asked at Thursday night’s council meeting why the 17 acres in Morrisville was not being used for the baseball field.
“There are limitations for what you can do on that land, so it’s being developed as a passive park,” said Doug McRainey, the director of Cary’s Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources Department.
Betty Parker, the senior director of real estate with WCPSS, said the 17 acres are not leased to the school system because it lies within an airport overlay district and no K-12 activities are allowed in there.
“We can’t build anything there that we can ask students to attend,” she said at the meeting. “We have to be outside it.”
Robinson pushed for Cary to work with the Federal Aviation Authority and Transit Authority to see if the restrictions could be removed because of the number of other overlays where baseball fields are located, she said.
Athletic and baseball fields at Mills Park
Currently, Cary already has joint-use agreements with WCPSS for elementary, middle and high school athletic facilities, according to the town.
In 2008, Mills Park, located off Green Level Church Road and Morrisville Parkway, was developed as part of a joint-use agreement with WCPSS. The area is part of an original 250-acre property that Cary bought in 2001.
The town agreed then to provide a portion of the property to WCPSS for both Mills Park Elementary School and Mills Park Middle School located on Mills Park Drive in Cary.
Both the town and school system signed an agreement to co-fund the construction of three multi-purpose fields including a basketball court and a softball field for the schools.
According to the town of Cary, a second phase of construction for Mills Park began in 2019 which included a children’s play area, parking, restroom, greenway trail, and a picnic shelter.
The master plan for the construction was completed and the parking lot and trail are open to the public. Construction on the playground and restroom was halted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and will be completed in 2023, according to McRainey.
In addition to the operational hours of the baseball field, the future high school would have some off-season use in the fall up until 5 p.m. on weeknights.
Cary would have access beyond all those uses on weeknights and all of the weekends throughout the year.
Annual programmed use is estimated to be 450 hours for high school baseball and 1,100 hours for the town of Cary events.
This story was originally published October 28, 2022 at 10:45 AM.