The Foley City Council recently approved improvements at the Raymond C. Christensen Sports Plex on Cater Lee Way, including enhanced batting cages and new lights. Jeff Lee, Foley parks director, said that the city plans to upgrade the batting cages at five of the 10 fields in the complex.

“This is one of our planned capital projects. This will be to add lights and carpet to the batting cages at the newer five-plex,” Lee said.

The project, aimed at enhancing safety for nighttime use, is anticipated to conclude before the spring baseball season begins. Additionally, a lightning suppression system will be implemented at the site to mitigate potential risks.

“We also hope to install a lightning suppression system,” Lee said. “The Event Center has had a lot of success with theirs in the last year or so. So we want to do that as well because we've had numerous lightning strikes to our irrigation wells, which has cost us thousands of dollars over the years so we'd like to try to install one of those.”

The combined cost of the batting cage improvements and the lightning suppression system is estimated to be $55,000.

In another decision, the council approved the removal of outdated ball-field lights at Mel Roberts Park on Cedar Street. The eight sets of lights will be declared surplus and replaced with newer systems.

“This is the old life system at Mel Roberts Park that we're about to start and remove as part of the capital project to improve that park,” Lee said. “It's a very old system. So this is probably going to be garbage when we get it down, but we would like to deem it surplus and get rid of it.”

Mayor Ralph Hellmich emphasized that the new LED lighting system would lead to reduced utility costs at the park.