News

How much does it cost to name park features?

By Bill Moss, Published: September 20, 2017

If you want your name up in lights, you can have it. But you have to get out your checkbook.

The Hendersonville City Council approved a price list last week for naming various features of Berkeley Mills Park: baseball field, $150,000; dog park, $60,000; dugout improvements, $12,000 each; playgrounds, $150,000 for a single donor, $25,000 each for six donors; concession stand, $20,000; grandstand improvements, $50,000; picnic shelter, $20,000; bench, $1,500; picnic table, $1,000; scoreboard, $30,000; memorial trees, $300.
Councilman Ron Stephens asked about the duration of the naming.
“Let’s say somebody wants to name this baseball field after their business,” Stephens said. “Is that forever? What if they go out of business? Or they sell it to someone else and they change the name of it?”
City Manager John Connet said the city can adjust the sponsorship policy to account for that.
“If it is Acme, whatever, and they go out of business, you can put that in the agreement that that can be removed,” he said.
The council did not act on naming of the park, which is made possible because Kimberly Clark donated 60 acres to the city in 2008.
“One thing is it’s the historic name of it,” Stephens said. “But the other thing is they gave us the land.”