GNGLL's Bennett Road Parks and Fields
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Purpose
Purpose
As part of Gray-New Gloucester Little League's mission to give every child the opportunity to play baseball and softball, we are pivoting our field efforts to recovering the Bennett Road Gravel Pit to create a self-sustaining facility that will provide a fun, safe, and exciting place for our kids to play and for our community to come together.
Our Mission: Gray-New Gloucester Little League (GNGLL) strives to teach the love of baseball and softball to all players regardless of ethnicity or economic status. We want to see kids playing outside with their friends and enjoying this great sport. Our goal is to bring families together and build a community spirit through our shared love of baseball and softball.
An overhead mockup showing the fields and loop trails.
An Updated, Community-centric Plan
An Updated, Community-centric Plan
Gray New-Gloucester Little League (GNGLL) and the community of New Gloucester want to create a multi-field recreational complex on an 18.7 acre property, the site of a former gravel pit donated to GNGLL in 2015, located on Bennett Road in New Gloucester. Without restoration and improvement, the property will remain a blight on the town of New Gloucester.
GNGLL, serving over 300 families over a 20 square-mile area, will bring the Gray-New Gloucester community together in one location for season-long baseball and softball game days. GNGLL will create up to four ball fields - three standard softball and one adult-size softball. The fields will use portable mounds to support baseball play, and the adult-size field will host up to three tee ball games in the outfield allowing all of our levels to play their games at the same facility. Creating a single location where players and families can come together will allow more players to play, make participation easier on working and single-parent families, and generate revenues to provide access to more players via scholarships and reduced fees. An onsite snack shack will generate additional funds and, together with handicap-accessible restrooms, will create a high-quality visitor experience.
Centrally located in southern Maine, our facility will provide a rustic, regional ballfield complex to host tournaments for teams from all over the region and beyond. Demand for such facilities is high, and rental fees will further ensure our financial sustainability.
Along with ballfields, the facility will incorporate a hiking/biking loop trail within its boundaries reaching nearly 2 miles in length. The property is surrounded by conserved lands owned by the Maine Woodland Owners organization, and our facility will provide parking and trail access to that land for recreational uses.
The propsed snack shack and playground area.
Four Field Layout
Four Field Layout
A view showing the full size softball field (near) and three Little League softball fields.
Full Site Layout
Full Site Layout
Click to see a view with the entire layout including parking area.
Working to Preserve the Intervale and Lower Village
Working to Preserve the Intervale and Lower Village
GNGLL’s ballfield project constitutes one part of a broad recreational and conservation initiative throughout New Gloucester. Originating from a partnership with the Royal River Conservation Trust (RRCT) that helped conserve approximately 180 acres of forested wetlands in New Gloucester’s Lower Village, there is broad public support for a second phase where GNGLL will develop the Bennett Property while minimizing the impact on the Lower Village's Intervale.
Hikers, hunters, snowmobilers, baseball and softball players, conservationists, and many others will benefit from increased access to activities and from conservation efforts that will preserve the character of New Gloucester in perpetuity. Through a series of meetings and discussions, multiple groups have come together to create this vision for the future of the community that engenders broad support throughout New Gloucester and the surrounding communities.
In addition, the New Gloucester Recreation Department (NGRD) is working with GNGLL to ensure that our new facility adds additional recreational value and enhances NGRD’s effectiveness and programming.
Through the combined efforts of multiple groups in the New Gloucester community, we are creating a vision that preserves the town’s character while reclaiming an effectively useless wasteland.
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