A Yankee batter grounds out in the fourth inning during the Dixie Boys City-County Tournament at the Athens Sportsplex.

Come spring 2018, Athens will have four more ball diamonds on which youths can play softball or baseball.

The change should give youths more practice time and allow players and their parents to spend less time waiting for games.

Athens City Council members on Monday unanimously accepted a low bid of $2,578,600 from Building Construction Associates Inc. of Decatur to build a new pod at the Sportsplex off U.S. 31 in Athens.

In addition to the $2.57 million bid, the city will pay 5 percent, or $128,930, of the bid toward engineering and close out, bringing the total projected cost to $2.7 million for the project, which is referred to as Sportsplex Phase II.

Earlier nights

Parks and Recreation Director Ben Wiley said the pod, which includes four new fields, as well as concessions, restrooms and shade structures, will be used by local youth leagues and travel youth leagues. He said having more fields to play on will allow players and their parents to come later and leave earlier.

As it stands, youth league games are sometimes starting as late as 8 p.m. on school nights simply because there are not enough fields for the demand.

“Where games were starting at 8 p.m., they could start at 6,” Wiley said.

Construction will begin as the weather allows but is not expected to be completed until spring 2018, he said.

The council also unanimously approved a second resolution that will appropriate $1.3 million from the contingency reserve fund to the capital projects fund to pay for the construction costs associated with the new pod of fields. (The reserve fund is made up of 20 percent of the additional 1-cent sales tax approved by a previous council in October 2012.)

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Council President Joseph Cannon said after the council approved the resolutions. “I’m excited about bragging rights on the Interstate… Where I work, a lot of people talk about our facilities. It’s nice for us to be improving upon something that is already spoken highly about. Too often times, you hear about people fixing something that is broken, but we are actually improving upon it and I’m excited about it.”

Mayor Ronnie Marks thanked Cannon for his comment, calling the council’s move “progressive.”