Popular Keys baseball park destroyed by Irma ready to reopen
Harry Harris Park in Monroe County serves as a monument that the Keys is still recovering from Hurricane Irma nearly a year and a half after the Category 4 storm blasted its way through the island chain in September 2017.
The oceanfront, county-operated park, which is popular with beachgoers, anglers and nature lovers, as well as young athletes who play on its ball fields, was mostly destroyed by Irma’s storm surge.
Throughout 2018, the park, located in Tavernier just south of Key Largo, opened in stages as county workers repaired damages. The boat ramp, playground and beaches reopened last February, but its two baseball fields, which are used by the local Little League, had to sit out last season.
The county announced this week that they have been repaired, with reconstructed dugouts, fencing and bleachers, and are scheduled to reopen Friday, which means they’ll be ready for Little League season’s March 1 opening day.
“The kids are really going to love this,” Robert Glassmer, the county’s Upper Keys administrator of Buildings, Parks and Beaches, said in a statement Tuesday.
Jenn Weiden, president of the Upper Keys Little League, said that as a result of the fields reopening, the league was able to open a new division with more than 70 players for the upcoming season.
“Our goal is to provide baseball opportunities to all players between the ages of 4 and 13, and the reopening of Harry Harris baseball fields is certainly allowing us to do so,” Weiden said in a statement.
The cost of the project was not immediately available.
The county installed a new irrigation system for the fields and new electric in the concession stand, said Cammy Clark, county spokeswoman. Workers also had to remove 600 tons of clay that was contaminated with saltwater and seaweed and replace it with new clay, Clark added.
For now, the fields will only be open for daytime play because the lighting has yet to be completed by an outside contractor, Clark said.
There are still more repairs that need to be completed to get Harry Harris back to the shape it was in before Irma. The county is in the process of designing repairs for Wilkinson Point and the swim area jetty, Clark said.
This story was originally published January 29, 2019 at 2:53 PM.
