What you need to know about the Cary Park District's referendum

The upcoming referendum from the Cary Park District will ask whether officials can sell up to 87 acres from Hoffman Park in the name of building a multipurpose sports center.

The center, which would be built at Cary-Grove Park, is estimated to cost between $16 million and $26 million, said Steve Cherveny, the park district's executive director.

The goal is to make enough money from the sale to cover the sports center and its construction costs.

Officials have not yet determined when, or how much they would sell the land for.

"There's several things that have to happen before we go down that road," Cherveny said.

Those things include getting appraisals on the property to see how much it's worth, something that won't be done until taxpayers sign off on the measure.

The park district must also develop detailed plans for what the sports center would include.

As it stands now, it would offer an indoor track, a health and fitness center, turf fields for soccer, lacrosse, football and baseball, courts reserved for basketball and volleyball and an area reserved for teen sports and community activities.

The district also has placed covenants on the property specifically barring gravel mining, Cherveny said.

Officials are asking to sell off existing property because resident surveys and focus groups determined that while the sports center was necessary to augment existing facilities that are 30 years old, people didn't want their taxes raised to build it.

If the question looks familiar on the ballot, that's because it is.

The district floated the measure in 2007 and it failed by 140 votes.

The park district last pushed a tax-rate increase in 1999, when it sold $11 million bonds to buy the 268-acre Hoffman Park.

It has until 2017 to pay off the remaining $8.5 million.

For more information about the upcoming referendum, visit www.carypark.com.