CHAMPAIGN — It’s no star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but Earline McFarland has received a special marker of her claim to local fame: a plaque on the new concessions building at Douglass Park that honors her many years serving up Douglass Dogs and other refreshments for First String Little League.
Earline is the mother of Peter McFarland, who founded the league in 1993.
“I wanted to help him out, because he works so hard at that, and he was doing all that for the kids,” she said.
She ran the league’s concessions stand from the day it opened until about 2018, when she had to ease up due to health problems.
However, she’ll be back at Douglass Park soon to celebrate the new concessions building and other improvements.
The Champaign Park District will hold a grand opening for the upgrades at 1 p.m. Saturday at the park, 501 E. Eureka St. According to First String, free drinks, hot dogs and popcorn will be available at the new concession stand during the event.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 1:30 p.m. and be followed by a First String T-Ball game.
Those interested in attending the free, public event are encouraged to RSVP by emailing marguerite.bailey@champaignparks.org.
Park District Director Sarah Sandquist told The News-Gazette that the project’s main pieces are finished, though there are still some “finishing touches” on the to-do-list.
“It’s so beautiful out there,” she said. “Douglass Park is already such a picturesque park with the variety of amenities that are there, but the new field looks really nice. And I’m excited to see activation at the park, more activation at the park than we already have.”
The upgrades include:
- A new baseball field near the park’s northeast corner.
- A new building with a concessions stand and restrooms.
- A pavilion.
- Updates to the existing fields (such as drainage work).
- Updated turf in the batting cage.
Parks officials said that the total cost of the project was $1.18 million.
The park district and the city of Champaign contributed $400,000 each to the project, Sandquist said.
Additionally, an anonymous donor initially gave $300,000 to the project and later provided another $200,000.
Sandquist said the increased gift was appreciated, as the district had been unsure about whether or not it would be able to include the pavilion in the work when it was originally bid out.
The district has not yet decided what to do with the leftover funds from this project, which Assistant Director of Operations and Planning Bret Johnson estimated may come out to about $100,000. However, Sandquist said that future upgrades to the park may include adding shade to the older dugouts, which did not make it into this latest project.
Johnson added that other possibilities could include adding an outlet at the batting cage for First String’s new pitching machine, which would necessitate some boring work.
“We could also consider scoreboards,” he said.
“This project wouldn’t have been possible without the partnership of the city and the anonymous donor and First String, of course, so we’re just really pleased to partner with them,” Sandquist said.
The league worked alongside the park district to advocate for the project, which was thought up by Peter McFarland a couple of years ago after First String learned that it would not be granted its usual eight-week permit from the health department due to inadequacies with the previous concessions stand, such as a lack of running water.
“It’s not quite how we had planned it,” he said, “but it turned out really well. So I’m very pleased.”
McFarland said that his hopes for future improvements include scoreboards and another batting cage, but these initial upgrades are “a good start to what we wanted.”
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