About the Project:
Walnut Creek Soccer Club has engaged the City of Walnut Creek to provide state of the art training and game facilities for the youth soccer players. The objective is and has always been to ensure children in the Walnut Creek community are able to benefit from the fantastic life skills playing a sport provides. The field improvement projects at Heather Farm and Tice ensure they are able to do so in a safe environment. The goal is to enhance local facilities to compete with other top organizations in the area to ensure WC families can play locally. Currently, the club loses approximately 1,000 hours of game and practice time due to city maintenance of fields, lack of lights, and inclement weather. With the field improvement projects the club will be able to satisfy the growing demand for soccer in the Walnut Creek community. Each year the organization is required to turn away families who’d like to be involved in the Walnut Creek Soccer Club community. This project will ensure the club can continue to offer its programs to all levels of players and age groups for decades to come. Walnut Creek Soccer Club is the largest youth sports organization in Walnut Creek with 2,900 players joining its ranks each year.
Facility Specs:
Walnut Creek Soccer Club engaged with city officials to ensure field improvements were included in Measure O. Following its passing, Walnut Creek Soccer Club and CWC signed a Memorandum of Understanding outlining the proposed improvements. The focal points of field improvements were Tice and Heather Farms. The Tice project will include adding lights that will allow for more hours of safe play, especially during the late fall and winter months. Heather Farm includes turfing fields one and two. The turf of Heather Farm will also ensure that the city is able to save hundreds of thousands of gallons of water over the life of the turfed field, reducing the City’s climate footprint. Turf requires less upkeep and on average is 25% less costly to maintain than natural grass. It requires no watering, no mowing, and very little maintenance. Heather Farm #1 will be a full size 11v11 field with lights, fencing and more. Heather Farm #2 is currently fitted as a 9v9 size field, but has room to additionally expand to an 11v11. HF2 may be lined for 9v9, 7v7, and 5v5.
About the City Partnership:
As the majority stakeholder at these facilities, Walnut Creek Soccer Club has agreed to contribute $1.5 million to the field improvement project After careful review and analysis, we feel this is a fair contribution to the anticipated $9-11 million total capital cost. In total the club will need to raise $2mm to cover additional costs such as new goals, benches, storage, and related field equipment. Your donations will be directed into the general funds of WCSC. In the unlikely event the Field Improvement Project does not proceed, general funds are typically used toward other capital improvements, scholarships, and other improvements invested directly into the Walnut Creek and WCSC community. We anticipate a project completion date of the Fall of 2025 however the club continues to advocate for a reduced timeline for the project.
