Photo by Jon Anderson
Hoover Sports Park East on Sept. 9, 2025. The park is slated to have its entire electrical system replaced, costing $4.5 million, including the cost of investigating problems.
The Hoover City Council on Monday night approved spending $3,675,000 to replace the entire electrical system at Hoover Sports Park East, pushing the total cost of fixing the park’s electrical problems to $4,525,000.
The electricity at the park has been shut off since early this year due to dangerous electrical currents being detected on multiple fences. An engineering company was hired to investigate and determined that the electrical problems were pervasive throughout the park. Damaged cables were pushing currents onto the fences in multiple areas, causing a safety hazard, said Alfred Maiola IIII, an electrical engineer with Dewberry Engineering.
The cause of the problems was unclear; it could have been lightning, rodents or simply age, Maiola said. City Administrator Ken Grimes estimated the park off Old Rocky Ridge Road is more than 30 years old.
The City Council in August approved spending $350,000 to pay for the work done to identify the problems and approved another $500,000 in September to tackle the first phase of replacing the electrical system.
That first phase includes buying hub transformers from Southern Co. and routing power to the concession stands, restrooms and maintenance facility — work that likely will take until February to complete, said Mindy Wyatt, a strategic analyst for the city who is coordinating the project.
The second phase of the project — which is costing the $3,675,000 — will be to replace all the field lights on the baseball and softball fields and football/soccer/lacrosse fields. That work may not be completed until August 2026, Wyatt said last month.
With no electricity at the park, there are no lights, and the concession stands are inoperable, Grimes said. Activities have been limited to daytime hours or moved to city fields next to Spain Park High School or the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, he said.
See other actions taken by the Hoover City Council on Monday night, including approval of a four-story 80,000-square-foot medical office building and surgery center in Stadium Trace Village and approval of a proposed lease agreement with the Alabama Department of Revenue for space in the Riverwalk Village Health and Wellness Center.
