The LaPorte Sports Complex is just about complete. All the city needs now is time for the grass to grow.

Superintendent of Elizabethton City Schools Corey Gardenhour said the field is officially done, with all the grading and landscaping work completed. They just need to keep up maintenance.

“We have had to let the grass grow in,” Gardenhour said. “We are hoping to reseed and put in fertilizer.”

City Schools met with the Northeast Community Credit Union and the Elizabethton Soccer Association on October 25 of last year for the ground-breaking ceremony for the complex, a project Gardenhour at the time said was the culmination of 10 years of planning.

Currently, the land still belongs to the city of Elizabethton, who decided the development did not need to go to the Planning Commission as no buildings are currently in the works for the facility.

“Right now, the goal is to get kids out there as soon as possible,” Gardenhour said. “The bottom part should be ready in the fall.”

The property currently contains a higher elevation part adjacent to G Street and then a bottom part facing Elizabethton High School. Gardenhour said the bottom part has enough space for a full soccer field, with plans for smaller, practice fields as well.

“We will have an electrical contractor out there to put in a new service,” he said. “[The field] will be illuminated.”

This update comes after workers erected a new sign reading “LaPorte Sports Complex” on the G Street side of the field.

Current plans are for the field to be in use for three different groups: youth soccer, the Boys and Girls Club and city schools, though soccer is not the only sport city schools plan to host on the field.

He said teams will be able to chalk lines onto the field when it comes time to play games in the complex.

Gardenhour said during the ground-breaking ceremony the complex is meant to make the sporting experience more accessible for the city’s youth by providing a common gathering place for local teams to practice and play.