Mallery Park's Ballfields Close for the Winter. Here's What Stays Open Around Them.

Mallery Ballfield Park has been fenced off since Monday, October 19. Glynn County expects it to stay closed through the end of February 2027, while crews rebuild the ballfields and the park amenities around them. The schedule is built around youth baseball, and so far it fits that calendar well. If construction finishes on time, ballplayers get new fields before the spring season and miss very little. This winter's closure falls mostly on everyone else at 601 Mallery Street: families who come for the playground, people who reserve the picnic pavilion, and anyone who counted on the park's restrooms.

What closed Monday, and what stays open at Kings Park

The county lists a lot more at Mallery Park than ballfields. It has three baseball fields, batting cages, restrooms, a picnic pavilion, a concession facility, a playground and the St. Simons Recreation offices. The closure notice covers the ballfield and the "surrounding park amenities." It also names the exceptions.

Kings Park, listed at 602 Mallery Street, keeps running as usual. Its courts are untouched, with four dedicated pickleball courts and two lighted courts striped for both tennis and pickleball. The dedicated pickleball courts stay open dawn to dusk. Open play runs Monday through Saturday from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. and Tuesday and Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. On the dual-use courts, mornings go to pickleball on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday and to tennis on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. If your week runs on those courts, nothing changes except where you find a restroom.

Why October was the month to start

On the county's current youth sports schedule page, the fall 2026 listings are soccer and football. Baseball and softball aren't on it. Baseball at Mallery is a spring tradition. The Brunswick News described the St. Simons Island Recreation program's 2025 Opening Day as a parade from the Pier to the Mallery Street fields, with the St. Simons Island Athletic Association involved in the event.

The construction window fits around that season. The Islander reports that construction is targeted for completion ahead of the Spring 2027 season, which lines up with the county's end-of-February reopening estimate. If the schedule holds, a player who finished last spring on the old fields opens next spring on new ones and never loses a game day to construction.

The playground and the pavilion don't take a season off, though, and neither do the restrooms. Those are the amenities that disappear for about four months, and the people who use them in November, December and January have no off-season to wait through.

Who is paying for which part

Mallery Park is county property, but most of this rebuild isn't county money. According to The Islander, Glynn County is leading the project and paying for the design. The St. Simons Island Athletic Association is leading and paying for construction. Coleman & Company is the designer, and county staff, the design team and SSIAA have been meeting regularly to coordinate the work.

The Brunswick News puts the renovation at $3.5 million. It names Patrick Parker and Davis Love III as lead sponsors, along with Adam Wainwright, the Glynn Academy graduate who pitched 18 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals and played on these fields as a kid. The paper also quotes county communications director Brittany Dozier thanking the Communities of Coastal Georgia Foundation, SSIAA and local philanthropic leaders.

The sponsors' own words in that article explain why they're giving. Wainwright told the paper, "Places like Mallery Park are where it all begins." Parker said, "Some of my earliest memories are playing pickup baseball games at Mallery Park," and added that he is still friends with Nick Doster from those games sixty years later. Love said he and Robin's kids "made so many great memories playing softball and baseball, and now our grandkids are enjoying the playground and courts." Keeva Kase, president and CEO of Communities of Coastal Georgia, told the paper he grew up playing at Mallery and his own kids play there now.

The current work also differs from the last round. Glynn County's SPLOST project page shows a separate Mallery Park Improvements project, finished April 11, 2025, that dealt with north-end parking and drainage. Its SPLOST 2022 spending totals $1,589,440. Sales-tax money covered the parking lot and drainage, and the fields are being rebuilt largely on money raised by SSIAA and private donors.

What the fields look like in March

The county's description of the finished work in The Brunswick News is specific. It calls for "three reconfigured youth baseball fields, upgraded dugouts and seating, improved lighting and irrigation, walkway and accessibility enhancements, and infrastructure updates throughout the complex."

The list is all baseball. The ballplayers who are least affected by the winter timing get most of the upgrades, and the only part aimed at everyone else is the walkway and accessibility work. The county hasn't announced anything about the playground or the pavilion. Until it does, assume they come back in March looking the way they did before the fences went up.

Where the playground and dog crowd can go until then

Here are the county parks on the island that can fill in for this winter, each with what it offers in place of Mallery:

• Demere Park, 1219 Demere Road. Playground, multipurpose sports field, paved walking trail, skate park, pavilion and restrooms. It's the closest match to what Mallery offered as an everyday family park.
• Frederica Park, 2201 Lawrence Road. Multipurpose field, playground, dog park, botanical trail, paved walking trail, pavilions and restrooms. It covers the playground, the dog run and a walk in one stop.
• Neptune Park, 550 Beachview Drive. Two playgrounds, benches, picnic tables, the pier, beach access and restrooms.
• Epworth Park, 108 Lady Huntington Drive. Eight tennis courts, two bocce courts, a fenced dog park, picnic tables and restrooms.
• Gascoigne Bluff, 1000 Arthur J. Moore Drive. A 10-hole disc golf course, waterfront pavilion, fishing pier and restrooms, for an afternoon that doesn't need a ballfield at all.

The county's dog park page lists Frederica and Epworth as the island's other options besides Kings Park. Kings Park's dog run is still open, so those two only matter if you want a change of scenery. Off the island, Selden Park at 100 Genoa Martin Drive in Brunswick has baseball and soccer fields, a playground, tennis and pickleball courts, a pool and a gym. The county's directory pages list amenities, not daily status, so check with Glynn County Recreation before making a special trip. The Mallery park office is still open for exactly that kind of question.

The date to watch

The real test is the end of February 2027. That's the county's reopening estimate, and the target in The Islander is for construction to finish ahead of the Spring 2027 season. If those two dates hold, the 2027 Opening Day parade can head from the Pier to new fields on Mallery Street, and the families who used the playground and pavilion all winter get the park back on the same day.

The Angela Harrison Team will keep following the Mallery rebuild through the February reopening. If you'd like to know how projects like this one are changing St. Simons around the home you own or the one you're considering, we're happy to talk.