Smithfield is in the very early stages of developing a master plan for the Luter Sports Complex.

According to Isle of Wight County records, the town owns just under 93 acres at West Main Street and Waterworks Road. Just over 20 acres form the $4 million athletic park that opened in 2018.

The site includes a baseball field and three softball fields leased to the Smithfield Recreation Association, which runs baseball and softball programs for children ages 5-16, and a football field leased to Smithfield Packers Youth Sports, which runs football, track and cheerleading programs for ages 5-14.

According to Town Manager Michael Stallings, the town’s contract with SRA originally specified five fields. The fifth was graded but never fully developed and is currently used by SPYS as a practice field. SRA now pays $25,000 annually for dibs on the use of the four existing fields in addition to a $30,000 per year payment it agreed to make over 10 years starting in 2018 when it scrapped plans to sell Beale Park on the opposite end of town to pay its $300,000 share of the Luter Sports Complex’s construction cost.

The first draft of a master plan the engineering firm Kimley-Horn created in November shows the fifth field formally striped as a 50-yard practice or flag football field, the addition of a T-ball field, additional batting cages and parking, and the development of the remaining acreage into a second baseball and softball complex.

Two of the existing softball fields are “mustang” fields, whose bases are 60 feet apart per standards for ages 9-10 set by the regional Pony League, with which SRA is affiliated. The third softball field is a “bronco” field intended for ages 11-12. Its bases are 70 feet apart. The draft master plan proposes a second full-size baseball field and two more softball fields being built to bronco standards.

Stallings, at the Town Council’s Feb. 4 meeting, said the plan had been shared with SRA and SPYS, but he noted the concept is preliminary and very likely to change.

“There is no funding identified for that conceptual buildout,” Stallings said.

Hypothetically, the town could rent out the second baseball complex as a tournament facility, Stallings said.

Stallings said the town also looked at the possibility of adding a second football field but determined it would only be able to accommodate a 100-yard field if it lacked end zone buffers.

“Right now that plan is still under works; the engineers are still trying to rehash it,” Stallings said.

The draft plan shows the potential addition of press boxes at the football field and at the proposed second baseball complex and a walking trail that would connect the two phases. The plan shows the second phase having its own parking lot with 217 spaces. An additional 170-plus parking spaces would be added to the 2018 phase, some of which would be near the site of the circa-1840 Wombwell house the town demolished in 2021.

Additional parking at the Wombwell site had been part of a 2023 plan to add a 3,800-square-foot building to the park that would house maintenance equipment for all town-owned parks. The town defunded that project and reallocated its earmarked federal COVID-19 relief funds to instead go toward the two-story concession and bathroom facility the town built in 2024 adjacent to the football field after the cost estimate for the maintenance building soared to over $1 million. The draft master plan still shows space at the former Wombwell site for the maintenance building’s future construction.