VALLEY CENTER —— Young athletes in Valley Center will be seeing a couple of construction projects in the coming months, Valley Center Parks and Recreation District officials said Monday.

The first adds a soccer field next to Cole Grade Road and much-needed drains to the neighboring girls softball field, district manager Joyce Johnson said. The softball field was flooded through part of summer, she said.

Depending on winter weather, construction at the athletic fields is expected to be finished by the end of January.

The second project, replacement of aging bathrooms next to the swimming pool at Adams Park, is scheduled to begin next year.

The new playing fields will host lacrosse and football games in addition to the expanding Valley Center Soccer League, which enrolls almost 600 players ages 3 to 15.

"With the growth we've had, we desperately need the space," said Janis Litchfield, the registrar at Valley Center Soccer.

The league depends on fields at several Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District campuses, with up to eight games on Saturdays. The new field will help bring physically scattered parents and young players closer together, Litchfield said.

Renovating the Adams Park bathrooms got a thumbs-up from Conner Verdoni, 12, who was having a snack at a picnic table with a few friends near the swimming pool Monday afternoon.

"They're all rusty and old and they smell," said Conner, echoing the complaint that parents and kids have voiced for years.

The renovation plans are a boost for a district where officials were unsure last spring if they'd have enough money to run programs at the swimming pool during the summer.

"We've been waiting a long time to get these projects off the ground," Johnson said.

Most of the money for the athletic fields comes from a pair of state grants, the first received in 2000, together totaling more than $400,000. The total construction cost of the athletic fields is estimated at $660,000, Johnson said. The rest of the funds will come from the county, she said.

Funding for the bathrooms comes partly from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, $43,000, and from county Supervisor Bill Horn's office, $20,000.

The rest, up to $130,000, comes from San Diego County building permit fees reserved for capital improvements on parks.

The bathroom construction project has not yet been sent to contractors to bid, Johnson said.

Although able to tap hundreds of thousands of dollars from San Diego County for improvements such as the current construction, the Parks and Recreation District has much less for day-to-day maintenance.

Adams Park, with its popular summer swimming programs, was only kept in business this summer with a $15,000 donation from the Rincon Band of Mission Indians and a souped-up revenue-gathering plan from the pool's managers.

Johnson is the district's only full-time employee. A caretaker hired this year works part-time for the Valley Center-Pauma school district and part-time for the Parks and Recreation District.

The district has unsuccessfully gone to voters twice in the last four years to ask for additional property taxes.

Contact staff writer Quinn Eastman at (760) 740-5412 or qeastman@nctimes.com.