The purchase price: $7.2 million, or roughly 2 cents an acre.

At the time, many Americans criticized the purchase and mockingly called the transaction “Seward’s Folly.”

Salisbury city officials heard the same kind of criticism when they bought 314 acres of farmland off Hurley School Road for $4,750 an acre. Month by month, that land takes shape as the new Salisbury Community Park and Athletic Complex.

Year by year, City Manager David Treme believes, Salisburians will appreciate the move as a “Seward’s Sensation,” not a folly — a shrewd, important, even economic bargain.

Others already have bought into the idea, through their pocketbooks. Some $1.5 million in state, private and city money has been contributed to the project, and the $3 million in bonds approved for the park by Salisbury voters in May 1996 already has been spent.

What used to seem like long-range dreams have become short-term goals, thanks to the facilities already in place.

A long entrance road now leads back to four regulation soccer fields under seed to the left and, down a hill to the right, a complex of three baseball-softball fields.

Each of the ball fields has lights. They are all irrigated. Fencing, backstops, foul poles, sidewalks, parking and concrete pads for bleachers are ready. Grass is taking root in outfields.

The Parks and Recreation staff will allow the grass to grow undisturbed all spring and summer before softball players — a girls’ tournament — invade the fields next fall, the first official event. The soccer fields, also irrigated, probably won’t be ready until spring 2001.

“We don’t want to make the mistake other parks have made by going too early,” Councilman Scott Maddox says.

While the grass grows, construction will start this coming year on a dam and eight-acre lake, a building to hold staff and a new Rowan County Sports Hall of Fame, a Little League stadium and regular-sized baseball diamond, concession stand, restrooms, scoreboard tower, landscaping, play structures, parking for soccer and, possibly, two more soccer fields.

Other phases will carve out 3-mile and 5-mile cross country running trails, walking trails, an all-purpose field (that could accommodate football, for example), passive picnic areas and shelters and smaller ponds to help irrigate the many fields.

Now located a good two miles from the city limits, the park also could have a greenway connection to the rest of Salisbury along the Plantation Pipeline. If city officials ever install all the amenities on their master plan for the park, the total investment will approach $18 million.

“There’s space,” says Salisbury Parks and Recreation Director Gail Elder White. “We have space for a lot of things here. That’s nice, because land will be hard to find.”

The $3 million in bond money purchased the land and built much of the three baseball fields, two soccer fields, roads and other infrastructure. A $250,000 state grant, matched by the city, will pay for two more soccer fields, shelters, playground equipment and development of walking trails.

The Salisbury Community Foundation gave the park $200,000, half toward construction of the lake and half toward park amenities. The city will use a $200,000 Robertson Foundation grant the same way.

The Fulton Corp. issued a $300,000 challenge grant for the lake’s construction. The Hurley Foundation also has contributed $100,000.

Just recently, Food Lion and the Rowan Little League announced their agreement which will lead to another $500,000 donation, of which $400,000 will be used to build the two additional ball fields, including the “Food Lion Stadium” for Little Leaguers. The Rowan Little League will sell its land near the Food Lion headquarters to the grocery chain and move its operation to the new park starting with the 2001 season.

CCB, F&M Bank, National Starch and Chemical and Godley’s Garden also have been key contributors to the park, which has a separate, fund-raising foundation.

The park serves as a perfect vehicle for the Rowan County Sports Development Council, an arm of the Rowan County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The council promotes Salisbury and Rowan County as a venue for regional sporting events aimed at bringing tourist dollars to the community.

“We know we have some potential with the tournament market,” Elder White says.

Judy Newman, executive director for the Rowan County Convention and Visitors Bureau, says the new park will have enough fields and amenities to do tournaments in one location. The park also is big enough to allow for multiple activities at one time.

Recognizing the sage counsel contained in the line, “Build it and they will come,” Newman has been encouraged by the interest various sports organizations already have shown in the park.

“These people have kind of come to us and found us,” she says.

The first girls softball tournament next fall had been going to Charlotte, where participants felt like a small fish in a much too big pond, Newman says

“They wanted to come to a place where they’re important,” she adds.

The Sports Development Council already has softball tournaments in line for the summer of 2001, and the potential for regional soccer tournaments, especially for girls, seems unlimited.

With the fields in place for baseball, softball and soccer, the next step will be educating hotels, restaurants and retailers about the economic benefits these tournaments and the people they bring to a community can mean, Newman says.

“We have an opportunity here we just can’t pass up,” Newman says.

Maddox says Salisbury’s advantage over places such as Charlotte will be its smaller size and close proximity to places visitors can easily go to between games, such as hotel rooms, movies or restaurants.

“Our size doesn’t hurt us,” Elder White adds. “And if we never have a tournament, it will still be filled with local use.”

For an idea of what a tournament means economically, last year’s Women’s State Select subregional soccer competition, held at Catawba College and the Gordon Hurley Soccer Complex on Majolica Road, carried an economic impact of $136,500 over two days, according to information taken from surveys of the participants.

Maddox, who has been a strong council voice behind development of the park, now pushes hard for putting a Rowan County Sports Hall of Fame on the park site. It makes sense, Maddox says, in a county whose citizens value history and sports.

Park officials and planners first considered renovating the old farmhouse on the site as a place for staff, meetings and the museum. Elder White says estimates on just stabilizing the long abandoned house were too expensive. The city will tear down the house and put up a new building, which will house the future hall of fame. The building will borrow a lot of design features from the farm house, she said.

Maddox hopes the hall of fame will broaden the park’s efforts to raise private money. It will provide a place and reason for people to come to the park who don’t happen to have someone playing on one of the athletic fields, he says.

Maddox also looks forward to friendly, spirited discussions about who deserves membership in the county hall. With the park’s official opening next fall, Maddox hopes to induct the hall of fame’s first members.

Standing in the parking lot near the three finished ball fields on a bright, sunny day, Elder White sees horizon in all directions.