I live about 50 miles from there. Any THR members coming through the area are welcome to say hi.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...E84BC767C6CEA450862571A300631464?OpenDocument
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...E84BC767C6CEA450862571A300631464?OpenDocument
Illinois shooting complex, campground opens in Sparta
By Jim Suhr
ASSOCIATED PRESS
07/06/2006
SPARTA, Ill. (AP) -- A sprawling, $50 million recreational complex carved out of former mining land ceremoniously opened on schedule Thursday, a month before thousands of visitors are expected to arrive for the nation's largest shooting competition.
Thursday's dedication of the World Shooting and Recreational Complex near this southern Illinois town coincided with the opening of the four-day U.S. Open Trapshooting Championship, an Amateur Trapshooting Association event expected to draw nearly 1,000 participants.
Shooters included Larry Bird, a 62-year-old retired millwright from Peru, Ill., who spent three hours walking the site Wednesday night and declared it spectacular.
"You couldn't ask for anything better," Bird said Thursday. "There's not a trap range anywhere in the world like this. This is awesome for Illinois, it really is."
Officials have trumpeted the 1,500-acre site -- Illinois' newest state park -- as a potential economic boon, possibly drawing 250 permanent jobs and hundreds of thousands of visitors.
This weekend's trapshooting championship is a precursor to the granddaddy of U.S. shooting events -- the ATA's Grand American championship, which begins its first-ever 11-day run here on Aug. 8.
The event, staged every year since 1924 near Vandalia, Ohio, before being displaced by expansion plans at nearby Dayton International Airport, routinely draws about 7,000 shooters and an equal number of spectators each day.
Big stuff for 4,800-resident Sparta -- about 50 miles southeast of St. Louis -- and surrounding communities that lost hundreds of jobs in recent decades as mines and a printing plant shut down. Underscoring big hopes for the shooting complex, developers in Sparta have begun building an 84-room Holiday Inn, and plans are afoot to convert an old school into another hotel.
The complex has 120 trapshooting fields extending more than three miles. The site's 1,000 camping pads make it Illinois' largest camping area, complete with three "lakes" of water-filled strip pits.
The complex has a 34,000-square-foot events center -- home to conference rooms, showers and some eateries. Five buildings with a combined 40,000 square feet for lease by corporate vendors are done, with most of the 55 compartments already spoken for. Construction began early last year.
The estimated budget to run the complex for 2007 during the fiscal year that began last Saturday is $1.4 million, though the complex already has $3.2 million in guaranteed revenue from vendors and camping fees, said Marcelyn Love, a Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman.
Much of the business could come during the long-anticipated arrival here of the Grand American, whose long line of competitors has included trick shooter Annie Oakley in 1925 and movie and television cowboy Roy Rogers in 1959.
Sam Flood, the DNR's interim chief, has said the state expects the site to be used more than 250 days each year, with the events center available for everything from weddings to meetings. Flea markets are expected on the grounds, as well as a course for all-terrain vehicles and archery.