RIVERSIDE – A 26-acre sports park south of Corona on which construction is slated to begin in the next few months, employing several hundred people, will be “second to none,” a Riverside County official said Wednesday.

“This will be a great addition to the community,” county Economic Development Agency spokesman Tom Freeman said of the El Cerrito Sports Park project. “It's critically important when you talk about activities for families. A park of this size, type and quality can make a real difference.”

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved an $11.67 million contract with Calabasas-based Valley Crest Landscape Development Inc. for construction of the sports park, which will occupy an area west of Temescal Canyon Road, south of El Cerrito Road, just off Interstate 15 in the unincorporated community of El Cerrito.

The total project budget is about $13.5 million, including the cost of construction management services, inspection fees and contingencies. The original price tag was around $18 million.

The project will be funded through county redevelopment capital improvement monies generated from tax assessments on area residents, according to EDA documents.

Freeman said groundbreaking is expected by early 2009.

As many as 200 people will be employed during the two-year construction job, he said.

“Our desire is to see as many local residents as possible employed to do this public works project,” he said. “With our county unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, it's really important that when we're able to develop a project like this or any other, we emphasize hiring local workers.”

The park will feature multiple full-size baseball fields, basketball courts, tennis courts and a 5,000-square-foot community center.

“The park is going to be second to none,” Freeman said. “There will be all kinds of recreational space available ... There will be youth programs, soccer, kickball, softball, adult sports. This is about bringing the community together and uniting them, not dividing them, as Supervisor (John) Tavaglione would say.”

According to Freeman, the supervisor has made building recreational venues in his district “a high priority.”

The El Cerrito Sports Park encountered opposition during its design phase last year, when the owner of a five-acre lot that project managers said was needed for additional parking space refused to sell.

The county seized Roger Bacon's property under the government's power of eminent domain, after Bacon said the county's proposed purchase price was 40 percent lower than what he wanted.

The real estate developer vowed to challenge the seizure in a lawsuit, but the status of the case was not immediately known.