VIDALIA — When Recreation District No. 3 officials meet Feb. 17, they will be one step closer to making the new recreation complex a reality.

“We have some preliminary plans and we should have some preliminary infrastructure costs in the next day or so,” Recreation District No. 3 President Marc Archer said.

Following the approval of those plans, the next step will be public hearings, Archer said.

“We want to have those pretty quick, within the next couple of months or so, and move forward with this thing,” he said.

“We didn’t want to have any hearings until we had things in line to tell the public.”

In the interim, the recreation district will be pursuing funding for some of the infrastructure costs.

“There are still some funding issues up in the air,” Archer said. “It is not like we have $10 million in the bank and we are going to just build this $6 million facility and write a check for it.”

The recreation district is funded by a 3.89-mil tax, and Recreation District No. 3 Secretary-Treasurer Lula Caldwell said in the past it has generated $260,000 a year.

However, she said she expects it to generate approximately $300,000 this year with increased property assessments.

How much money is generated from a millage is dependent on how much property is valued.

When property values were reassessed last year, many properties were assessed at a higher value, thus generating more in tax revenue, even though the recreation district millage remained the same.

“We are going to go for some grants and take the best funding sources we can,” Caldwell said. “What we don’t want to do is raise taxes.”

The preliminary plans for the complex include baseball, softball and soccer fields, as well as basketball courts, tennis courts and a walking track, Recreation Director Mike Bowlin said.

The complex will have to be built in phases, though, with the ball fields being constructed first and the other infrastructure following, he said.

It is hard to set out a timeline for when the complex will be completed because of the number of permits that have to be completed before they can even break ground, Bowlin said.

People around the community are anxious to know when it will be done, Archer said.

“People are asking me about it all the time,” he said. “We are working on it big time, but it takes a lot longer than most people realize — a lot longer than I realized.”

When he took over as president of the board two years ago, one of his main goals was to get the new complex built, and though it has a long way to go the plan has come a long way, Archer said.

“I can see a light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “It is just a dim light.”

The 50-acre lot the complex will be built on was bought in part by the recreation district and in part by the City of Vidalia last year at a cost of $17,000 an acre.

The recreation district bought 20 acres and the city bought 30 acres.

Through an intergovernmental agreement in which the recreation district will develop the land, the district has leased the city’s 30 acres for 50 years at a cost of $100 a year.

The district has the option to lease the property for another 50 years when the current lease expires in 2057.