DUBLIN — The long-awaited addition to Dublin’s Fallon Sports Park is almost ready for its grand opening, complete with giant scissors cutting a ribbon, set for March 24.
Added attractions include two synthetic-turf, lighted soccer fields, a 90-foot lighted baseball diamond, picnic area and four lighted bocce ball courts.
“We’re 99.9 percent done,” says Lorin Jensen, the city’s project manager on the addition known as Phase Two. All that’s left to do leading up to the unveiling are making sure things like the new sod for the lighted baseball diamond has had a chance to get established.
Phase Two takes up 19.75 acres of the 60-acre park’s lower terrace. The second of three phases planned for the site, it cost $14 million and since late 2013 has been in the works for the park located on Lockhart Street between Gleason Drive and Central Parkway.
A unique addition is the “adventure playground” designed for kids looking for something a little more than the run-of-the-mill swing set and slide experience. With play structures such as the explorer dome, a half-geodesic dome with nets for climbing, it doesn’t disappoint. The structure is meant to inspire children to climb ropes as if “they were in a jungle setting,” says Jensen.
Another modern item in the playground is the rotating disc. Kids hang on to ropes tethered to a pole in the center of the disc as their body motion rotates the disc. There’s also a spinner bowl that turns around and around powered by the push of a foot on the play surface. And, after working up a sweat, a well deserved nap can be taken on a hammock.
Older park goers may want to try their luck at bocce ball on one the new lighted courts. Popular in Italy, bocce ball has developed a following in Dublin ever since the first courts were opened in the city’s Emerald Glen park.
City project manager Rosemary Alex, who worked on the first phase of the park, is a bocce ball convert and plays in Dublin’s city-run adult league. Although she didn’t grow up playing the game, she says learning the rules was a snap.
“What I found is that we just learned informally,” says Alex. It also helps to play with someone who knows the ins and outs.
Phase Two also includes a daring piece of public art, the gleaming Elatus statue. A mirrored stainless steel sculpture, it towers 31 feet above the park. According to the city, the abstract sculpture is meant to evoke either “a baseball catcher leaping to catch a fly ball, a soccer goalie defending against a high kick or a tennis player at the height of a serve.” Take your pick.
At the sculpture’s base are seven quotes from sports stars submitted online by citizens and then voted on by the Dublin City Council. The winners include:
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.” — Vince Lombardi
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky
“Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.” — John Wooden
Already booked for upcoming events are a “quidditch” tournament — a sport invented by J. K. Rowling played in her Harry Potter fantasy novel series — and portions of the Bay Area Corporate Games, an Olympic-style athletic event pitting office workers from different companies against each other in sports like badminton, beach volleyball, dodgeball, kickball and dragon boat racing.
The park’s added soccer fields will also be a boon to the 1700 participants in youth soccer leagues such as the Dublin United Soccer League. The league holds two soccer tournaments a year in the city, attracting 250 teams and 4,000 players.
Perhaps the most appreciative of Dublin’s sports teams for the completion of Phase Two is the city’s very own vintage baseball team, the Dublin Aces. Donning throwback uniforms from baseball’s beginnings in the 1880s, vintage ballplayers adhere to the game’s original rules. Even the umpire gets into the act by donning a top hat. The Phase Two diamond will be the Aces’ home field, and they’ll break it in with a match against their arch rivals, the Hayward Journals, after the park is dedicated March 24 at 10 a.m. The first pitch will be at 10:30 a.m., right after every player’s mustache is properly waxed.
While the final phase of the park has not been fleshed out, the city is working on it. One idea that’s been discussed is to include a much-needed cricket pitch (the central strip of the cricket field).
Opened in July 2010, the first phase of the park was intended to be something “more robust than your typical playground,” says Alex.
Phase Two continues that theme as the city hopes the park will become a “destination for NorCal teams coming to tournaments,” says Dublin spokesperson Shari Jackman. “Fallon is already known as a premier sports facility in the Tri-Valley. With Phase Two we expect to become a premier facility in Northern California.”