By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Crews will move forward with realigning the entrance to Warrior Park off Thompson Road this summer after the City Council approved engineering services for the project during a May 9 meeting.

Council members voted unanimously during the meeting to enter into an agreement with the Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood engineering company to handle the design of the realignment project.

The project will renovate and modify the entrance to the Field B parking lot at the park near the intersection of Thompson Road and Warrior Drive. Currently, the park’s entrance off Thompson Road is slightly west of the road’s intersection with Warrior Drive.

As a result, traffic traveling to the parking lot from Warrior Drive must turn left onto Thompson Road and then immediately turn right into the parking lot.

Once completed, the project will move the entrance to the eastern corner of the parking lot, which would allow traffic on Warrior Drive to travel straight across Thompson Road into the parking lot. The current entrance on the west corner of the parking lot would be closed if the project moves forward.

Alabaster City Manager George Henry previously said the project will include moving the entrance, installing a few new traffic islands on the east side of the parking lot, removing the current traffic islands on the west side of the parking lot, restriping and adding a new seal coat to the lot.

Henry said by rearranging the parking lot’s layout and removing the traffic islands on the west side of the lot, the city will be able to maintain about the same number of parking spots serving the four baseball fields at the park.

Henry said the city is looking to complete the realignment project this summer, when use of the baseball fields at Warrior Park is relatively low.