The City of Humboldt is walking away from plans to build three new ball diamonds on green space north of the hospital after realizing the project would be too expensive.

“There was going to be some excessive groundwork we would have to do to get the level that we need to have the ball diamond, just because of the orientation of the diamonds were opposite to the natural slope of the property, and it does drop off substantially from one end to the other,” director of community and leisure services Mike Ulriksen said.

“So there would have been definitely some additional costs associated with the groundwork.”

Minor ball, softball and slow pitch leagues have all seen a surge in players over the past two to three years, Ulriksen said. Softball and minor ball have been working with two to four operational diamonds, and slow pitch teams have had to play in Muenster.

The city will focus on rehabilitating the four existing diamonds at Centennial Park and look to add two more on the south side of the property, depending on next year’s budget, he said.

“If we can rehab the diamonds this year, we can have (the leagues) playing on them right till the end of their season in the summer of 2018 and then we can look to do some rehabbing over the course of the summer and into the fall, so they won’t actually lose out on any seasons of play here on the grounds. Which will really be a benefit to them to keep their numbers, as well as to us from a resource and logistics standpoint. It’ll be a much easier process that way.”