New Phase of Lowndes County Horse Park Has Begun
COLUMBUS – Courtesy of The Dispatch
Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders
“I got to thinking about how children in high school don’t enter these anymore, which is why we’re building (the park),” Lowndes County BOS President Harry Sanders recently remarked. “Maybe we can get kids interested again in things we used to do when we were kids.”
He was speaking of the Lowndes County Horse Park which is situated on a 22-acre site west of Columbus, just off of Hwy 82 on Tom Rose Road. Sanders hopes it will become the perfect venue in Lowndes County to hold horse shows, livestock shows, county fairs, and other outdoor and agricultural activities. The site currently Lowndes County Extension Service office on 485 Tom Rose Road. Extension Agent Reid Nevins said the location has helped the department grow significantly within the past year: “(The building) has been a godsend,” Nevins said. “Since we moved in during April of last year, we have had over 5,000 people walk through those doors. … That’s not phone calls, that’s coming in the door and interacting and asking questions and participating.”
The next phase is the horse park — a planned 45,000 square-foot open-air arena, which is projected to be completed in 2019. Construction is set to begin before October of this year.
At least at the beginning, “[this] will mainly be used for rodeo show horses … the EMCC rodeo team doesn’t have a place to host rodeos,” said Sanders. “They’ve agreed to host their rodeos at our arena. That’s going to draw in a lot of tourist dollars. … It’s going to get used.”
“The sky’s the limit, let’s just put it that way,” Nevins said.
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