Seven months ago, Big League Dreams General Manager Roy Fetherholf said that the park was targeting December or January to replace the aging field turf of the city-owned indoor soccer complex that the for-profit firm is leasing.
Now that January is more than halfway gone, players – some of whom have been playing in leagues consistently since the park opened – are growing tired of waiting for something that they feel should have been taken care of long, long ago.
And the fact that prices were just raised last year to help offset the cost of a massive project to update the softball infields and the stadium seats as well as the soccer field surface just salts a wound that has been festering for some time.
According to Gabe Padilla, who launched a petition in June of last year to stop the complex from raising entry prices until the upgrades were completed, the aging turf has become much more than just an eyesore to the people who use it all the time. It has become a safety issue.
“It’s something that they need to do because it has become unsafe – I know that they see the ambulances coming in and know what’s happening,” Padilla said. “It used to be that the facility would close for two weeks during the Christmas break and they would do the work necessary, and we all thought that they would replace the field.
“But this year when we came back that wasn’t the case – and they (are) heavily stressing the requirement that everybody who plays signs a release waiver.”
Last year the park, which had charged participants $3 admission for years with a $1 concession token coming back to them, increased the weekend participation fee to $5 – an increase that Padilla said he felt wasn’t warranted given that the work that was promised hadn’t been completed yet. His petition garnered more than 400 signatures, but did nothing to change the policy.
Multiple messages to Fetherholf were not returned, but according to Manteca Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Fant – who could speak to him – the park’s administration has been struggling to find a vendor that’s able to tackle the field turf project because of the number of contracts that are already outstanding.
Fant said that according to Fetherholf, no major injuries have been reported from the soccer complex – meaning nobody has notified the park the way that they’re supposed to when a major injury occurs.
But Padilla said that he knows people personally that have had to undergo surgery because of the poor field conditions. He worries about the exposed pieces of concrete that begin to show when the patchwork repairs that are occasionally made don’t adhere to the existing play surface the way that they’re supposed to.
“They just replace the troubled spots with strips, but those strips don’t quite line up and when heavy use they move and that’s when the concrete starts to show,” Padilla said. “What they need to do is just replace the entire field at once, and then put rules into place to prevent this from happening again – outlawing regular cleats and making sure that everybody who plays are wearing indoor shoes or turf shoes so it doesn’t tear up the turf.
“I’d like to be able to tell people to boycott it until they do the work, but they’re the only show in town so people are going to go down there and play.”
Ripon currently offers a form of indoor soccer known as Futsol – played on a hard surface – at the Verbero Power Play Arena. There are rumors of somebody looking to open a similar facility in Manteca in the Industrial Park area, according to Padilla. Both Modesto and Stockton both have an indoor turf field, but getting people to commit to driving out there he says is difficult.
Big League Dreams was built as a public-private partnership with a Cathedral City-based company that operates facilities throughout California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas. When the Manteca park opened, it was the second in Northern California – the first located in Redding, with half as many replica fields – and the city managed to negotiate a better overall deal in terms of revenue sharing than Redding did. While Redding receives 6 percent of the gross revenue up to $1.4 million and 8 percent of revenue that exceeds that amount, Manteca more than doubled that with 16 percent up to $1.4 million in revenue and 20 percent on everything thereafter – totaling roughly $400,000 in rent every year.
But the city had to invest $30 million in redevelopment agency funds that are being repaid by local property owners within the RDA boundaries to complete the construction of the facility, and as part of the agreement, the company oversees all upkeep and maintenance associated with operations.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.