Grenada Chosen for 2018 MEDC Community Development Award

11/18/2019

Grenada, Mississippi – The Mississippi Economic Development Council (MEDC) announced that Grenada Sports Complex won the 2018 Community Economic Development Award (CEDA) on February 7, 2019.

The CEDA program is a “Best Practices” program intended to recognize exceptional contributions of communities in the State of Mississippi for the following efforts: business retention & expansion, business recruitment, community development, and community involvement.

Projects often start with a dream and sometimes these dreams translate into becoming a reality. Such was the case with the passage in October for the coming Grenada Sports complex. In today’s marketplace, communities are discovering that by focusing on internal attributes they can create an environment that attracts future development. That development can take the form of housing, creative placemaking, shared community areas, maker spaces, green spaces, and other community attractions. Furthermore, community amenities also contribute to attracting workforce talent. The lack of community development amenities makes it difficult for companies to promote and grow their workforce and challenging to attract new industries for these same reasons. To this end, the Grenada Sports Complex not only serves as a regional attraction but also fulfills a real community need.

To address this community development need, the Greater Grenada Partnership along with Grenada County, the City of Grenada and Grenada Tourism decided to create a new community development master plan addressing specific areas of development including recreation, creative placemaking, housing development, and natural green spaces. The first project from this master plan to be tackled was the Grenada Sports Complex.

The team decided to partner with the University of Southern Mississippi to develop a feasibility study and master plan for research-based support and planning for the project. The results of this partnership, including the feasibility study supporting a regional need and positive economic impacts, yielded many community discussions leading to the creation and passage for the new Grenada Sports Complex.

The new complex is in now in the engineering design phase and will include two stages of development that will encompass the 170-acre complex.

The first stage will showcase a developed area of 70 acres that will include a total of twelve baseball/softball fields and five multi-use fields for soccer, track, archery and football. The second stage will focus on indoor sports’ activities, including an indoor track, bowling lanes, fitness and training areas, courts for basketball and volleyball, an arena, and a natatorium.

The remaining 100-acres will be used to develop multi-use housing developments, retail development, educational centers, green space, and cultural art areas.