Sixty Acres Park South will have a new, netted look by next summer.

The Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association (LWYSA) held a ground-breaking ceremony Monday evening for a $1.6 million project that includes nine new soccer fields, a bathroom facility, a playground set and paved parking to the south end of Sixty Acres Park.

Local politicians, including King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert and Redmond City Councilmembers Hank Myers and Hank Margeson, were on hand for the event, which put an official end to a long battle and began a new era at one of the Redmond area’s largest parks.

“This will be a great facility for the whole community,” said Curt Bateman, director of operations for LWSYA.

By next summer, Sixty Acres Park will have 25 soccer fields, making it “the biggest soccer facility west of the Mississippi,” according to Bateman.

Sixty Acres Park North already has 16 soccer fields, which has been leased and operated by LWYSA since 1984. LWYSA, which signed a 30-year lease with King County earlier this year, will fund the new project — with the help of a $150,000 grant from the state — and continue to maintain the park.

“This is going to be something that generations will be able to use,” said LWYSA board president Andy Hill, who had the honor of driving a giant bulldozer with his eight-year old son, Charlie, as part of the ground-breaking ceremony. “I think that we pledge ourselves to be great stewards of this complex.”

While soccer will be prominent at Sixty Acres Park, other non-soccer uses that have been staples at the park will continue.

Members of the Seattle Area Soaring Society (SASS), which fought hard against the project, will rent the field on Wednesday evenings from June through September for their popular weekly Fun Fly event, where they fly remote-controlled sailplanes, according to Steven Allmaras, SASS president.

In addition, various community groups, including the Boy Scouts, will be allowed to launch model rockets during the off-peak soccer months, Bateman said. And of course, any drop-in use is welcome when there are not large soccer tournaments, Bateman added.

SASS was a big opponent of the soccer-field project because it used the south portion of the park for their flying activities. But a compromise was made and SASS now has a 15-year lease to conduct their activities at Carnation Farms, which has a “fantastic field,” Allmaras said.

The battle for the land was long and ugly, but in the end, everyone got what they wanted, said Hill, the LWYSA board president.

“A lot of compromises were made and I think that’s what it takes to do something of this magnitude,” Hill said. “You will still see a lot of people shooting off rockets and flying airplanes here. We wanted everyone happy.”

The King County Council approved the 30-year lease with LWYSA last October and adopted several amendments intended to address the long-debated concerns of neighbors and non-soccer users of the north Redmond park.

“It worked out wonderfully,” said Lambert, a Redmond resident who represents District 3, which includes Sixty Acres Park. “It turned out to be our vision. It just took a lot longer. I think people will say ‘You know what, I’m really glad that’s here.'”

Keeping the surrounding neighbors happy and making the park open for other uses besides soccer were the top concerns by Myers, who is chair of the City of Redmond’s park and human services committee.

“The most important thing is that the parties are in agreement and the other uses will continue,” Myers said. “This went through the City of Redmond technical committee and received no objections. There were some concerns initially by some of the neighbors with an increase in traffic, but those were satisfied.”

In addition, as part of the new lease with the county, LWYSA agreed to sell 72-acre Muller Farm, which LWYSA originally bought the land in the 1990s with the intention of developing soccer fields. LWYSA will sell the farm, which has been fallow for more than two decades, to Full Circle Farm, owned by Andrew Stout and his wife, Wendy Munroe. Bateman said the deal should be finalized by October.

Kevin Brown, the county park director, said a lot of good came out of the Sixty Acres park project.

“I don’t think we could be happier with the resolution on all accounts,” Brown said. “The soaring people are happy with their new site, soccer is going to be able to satisfy their use issues, rec leagues will have a play play and we’re putting more land into agriculture.”