By By Adam Prestridge
If there's any good that came out of hurricanes Ivan and Dennis Atmore's youth baseball and softball leagues benefited from it.
Even though the damages caused by both ferocious storms caused several delays and many inconveniences over the past year, soon the league's diamonds will be almost hurricane proof.
Monday afternoon during the City of Atmore's regular scheduled council meeting, Mayor Howard Shell entertained a motion, which was passed unanimously to have the fields at Tom Byrne, Houston Avery and the t-ball fields behind Heritage Park to be renovated to meet updated codes.
"We've had a number of questions over the months whether we're going to be able to do anything in the parks," Shell said. "We got all kind of damage out there. Some of the light poles were broken, light fixtures are down and scoreboards are down. In order to bring those back to code all the wooden poles are going to have to be taken down and replaced by metal ones, all the electrical is going to have to go under ground, all the scoreboards are going to have to be replaced; it's going to have to be a totally new electric service in not one, but seven parks."
Three companies submitted bids to perform the work on the city's fields. Titan Electric Co. out of Dora was the lowest bidder and awarded the contract, which totals $810,800 with an additive alternate of $2,625.
Moody's Electric Co. out of Bay Minette was the highest bidder with a bid of $1,203,335 with an additive alternate of $1,733. Eldeco, Inc. out of Montgomery was the middle bidder with a bid of $982,762 with an additive alternate of $2,765.
There will be a pre-construction conference prior to construction and following that construction will begin.
"They indicated that they will try to have all of them ready for ball season when it starts again," Shell said. "We'll have state-of-the-art ballparks when they get through."