New Orleans Saints donates Superdome turf to Nicholasville sports complex

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (WTVQ) — While the New Orleans Saints may not have played for the coveted hardware on Sunday night during the Superbowl, the team is helping to make a difference in Central Kentucky.

Every year, after their last game, the Saints will typically replace their turf at the Caesars Superdome and donate it to different projects across the U.S.
This will mark the first one awarded to Kentucky.

What started as a dream for some in the city of Nicholasville, will now also include a piece of the NFL, “this is a historical investment for Nicholasville and our youth for Jessamine County and City of Nicholasville, this is a joint venture between the two county governments and the city government, and we’ll offer a wonderful facility for our youth and our community with this multi-purpose turf field,” said Alex Carter, the mayor of Nicholasville.

In a joint effort, the city and Jessamine County are building a multi-purpose sports turf field, with the aim of helping local youth.

“Multi-purpose, including soccer, football, we’ll have two youth softball fields and youth baseball fields, so it, it’ll just pay off for many years to come for our city’s youth,”added Carter.

David West, the Jessamine County Judge-Executive, also saying, “this is just one of the steps that we want to go forward. Hopefully this is the first step in providing a community center with some basketball, with some gymnasium, space and community space. So this is the first phase of that.”

Carter spoke out on the project coming to fruition, “we were in the beginning stages of bidding this project out and Turf Alliance, a company that is supplying the turf got this excellent opportunity to get the turf actually material donated from the New Orleans Saints.”

City leaders say they’re excited about the opportunities the turf field will bring for kids in the area.

“The turf will be completed in approximately 60 to 90 days, and at that point we have plans on building supporting facilities around that, which will take six months to a year,” said Carter.

West adding, “the highest paid professionals in the world have played on this field. Who knows, one day somebody from Jessamine County may be in the pros, but we’re so excited to have this.”

Judge-Exec West also saying that the entire project is estimated to be about one-million and a half dollars once everything is complete,  and they hope to have it finished by this time next year.

The complex is being created at John Preece Park in Nicholasville.