The historic Douglas Park is opened to the Rock Island community after undergoing rennovation

Douglas Park was built in 1904. 

The Rock Island space was home to the first NFL game as well as the first Illinois vs. Iowa football game. 

The purpose of current renovations is to keep people coming to the park for generations, but it has not been an easy road. 

“Funding has been a challenge for our parks department. We’re lucky in Rock Island we have a large number of parks. Unfortunately it costs a lot of money to maintain them,” says John Gripp.  

Born and raised in the area, Parks and Recreation Director John Gripp says he’s proud to be a part of this joint effort between Rock Island and the community group, Friends of Douglas Park.

“They raised over $125,000 dollars in kind donations to get the renovations started here in our Douglas Field number one,” says Gripp.  

The donations went into a new score board, fences, dugouts and irrigation. 

Gripp says the city contributed $50,000 dollars towards a playground that the community can enjoy. 

High school students, parents and the Rock Island community showed up Tuesday night to enjoy the park’s first game in nearly 10 years. 

 “There’s a lot of nostalgia here, you’ve got boys on my team and on the Alleman team whose fathers played here whose grandparents played here,” says Rock Island High School Baseball Coach Jay Wayland. 

“It means a lot to me that for it to come back down here. I played here and my son played here,” says John Hanes.  

“It means a great deal to me just to see this field come back, and see baseball, see my son played here,” says Phyllis White.  

Community members have many ideas for this field and hope it will encourage kids to get involved in baseball and unite neighbors. 

“My hope is that we can make this non-conference game between us and rocky every year. When we play each other every year it will a cool tradition to start,” says Alleman High School baseball coach Jerry Burkhead. 

“I think it’s going to bring kids to playing baseball again it’s kind of died down. I think its going to bring the community together, so its going to do a lot,” says White.  

The next phases of the project includes building a multi-use field for soccer, football, softball and baseball. 

City officials also hope to build a Football and Fire Fighter History Museum in the old firefighter house number five.  

Gripp says they still need more funding but he hopes to have the projects completed in three years. 

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