By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Crews soon will begin working to realign the entrance to Warrior Park off Thompson Road after the Alabaster City Council approved a construction bid for the project during a June 27 meeting.

Council members voted unanimously during the meeting to award a $106,852 bid to Global Management Group to handle construction on 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.

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.

City officials previously 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.

Traffic lights also will be added to the south quadrant of the intersection to handle traffic traveling out of the parking lot.

“My goal is to get this down and get out of the way before the first home football game, because that lot is used for overflow parking,” Alabaster Mayor Marty Handlon said.