LAC LA BICHE - Former Lac La Biche County Mayor Omer Moghrabi slid back into his one-time home base— Lac La Biche County’s council chambers — last week to pitch another attempt to save the Main One baseball diamond in the community.
Moghrabi used a five-minute slot in the Public Input Session of the March 28 council meeting to suggest that the main baseball diamond remain in the new plan for the McArthur Park Master Plan. He said the diamond could be adjusted to fit the new park plan with minor modifications.
He said the previous municipal council — with him as mayor — had discussed keeping the ball diamond in place, but modifying it to make it a “multi-functional type of diamond.”
He said that keeping the infield as grass, but having a shale baseline, along with a portable pitching mound and the ability to install and remove fencing would keep the long-serving field in play.
“The past council had talked about making it a green-space, a multi-functional type of diamond … and that’s the way it should have stayed,” he said, encouraging council to keep the baseball history in the park. “I urge this council to take a good hard look at that — to make it part of the green-space. I know we are a ways down the road … I didn’t want to come in and argue with people, but I think we have to respect the past and what has been done in the past.”
Moghrabi was part of a failed community-group effort more than a year ago that struck-out in its attempt to keep the ball diamond during the recent planning sessions to re-draw the McArthur Park and Lac La Biche Recreation Grounds.
Outta here
The baseball field, which has been in the community for almost a century, will be removed later this year and replaced with a large green-space leisure area in the new McArthur Park Master Plan. The remodel will close the entire park area this year as the three-year makeover begins.
Moghrabi was the municipal mayor when the planning first began on the park project. He was in favor of many of the changes in the plan, but was against the council-approved decision to remove the ball diamond. He was one of 300 residents to sign a local petition to keep the diamond in place.
Despite that petition, in 2020 councillors voted to move forward with the plan — which at the time was said to be a five-year project — with the removal of the long-standing baseball field taking place near the end of the timeline.
Following the election of a new council in 2021 — and Moghrabi losing the mayoral race to Paul Reutov — the McArthur Park Master Plan was fast-tracked to a three-year project. In recent months it was decided that the entire park area would be decommissioned for the duration of the project, starting this spring.
While the project is in motion — complete with a new $7.5 million budget for the construction of walking paths, a town-square gathering area, covered shelters, an updated beach, piers, a new skateboard park and a bicycle skills area — Moghrabi says it’s not too late to revisit the idea of keeping the ball diamond in place.
Since being elected, the current council has reversed and altered several decisions that had been approved by the previous council, including changes to the now- $31 million Main Street project, and the new timeframe for the McArthur Park plan rollout.
Moghrabi encouraged council to re-visit the baseball diamond decision, saying the entire park area is a perfect location for all leisure and recreation activities — including baseball.
“We have one of the most beautiful parks in the whole province, with that lake… I’m urging the whole council because the power is within the council,” he said.
Councillors made no decisions on the former-mayor’s presentation, only accepting his request as information.
The former mayor’s presentation comes as municipal officials have completed the design work on the first phase of the McArthur Park plan. Tenders for the initial phases of construction were issued at the end of March.
Features of the new McArthur Park plan that will be taking place in 2023 include enhanced parking areas around the existing museum building, along 99 Street and near the existing Rotary Club outdoor exercise park, shoreline enhancements, the installation of a small hand-launch boat dock, a modified beach with imported sand, and a day-use picnic area near the beach area.
