Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs Jr. first effort to examine a potential site for a multipurpose sports complex was rained out.

A planned visit to the city’s 200-acre Fisher Ferry Road property by Flaggs, Vicksburg City Attorney Nancy Thomas, North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield and other officials was postponed Monday after Sunday rains made the property impassable, Flaggs said.

“It was just too wet,” he said, adding the property will be toured at a later date. He said he asked Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman to check the site Monday.

Van Norman said the property had not fully dried from a rain the previous week, adding the combination of the still damp soil combined with the extra water from Sunday made it too muddy for vehicles to travel on the site.

“It’s just dirt, and we have very little grass on it,” he said. “When it gets wet, there’s nothing you can do with it. We’re coming into a period when we’re going to get a lot of rain. Hopefully we’ll have a period where it will dry out so we can drive vehicles across it.”

Flaggs said Nov. 17 he was going to tour the Fisher Ferry property because he had never been on it. The board the same day approved a contract with Stantec Consultants to determine the feasibility and cost of building an access road from the property to either U.S. 61 South or Dana Road.

Fisher Ferry re-emerged for consideration as a possible site for a multipurpose recreation complex in anticipation that a complex will be among the recommendations in a report by the city’s ad hoc committee on recreation.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen appointed the committee in May to examine the city’s recreation programs and facilities and present a report on its findings by Dec. 31.

Since its first meeting in June, the committee has been moving toward recommending a complex for the city, and had circulated petitions and opened a website and Facebook page supporting a recreation complex.

If a recreation complex is recommended, Flaggs said, he will appoint a site selection committee and a finance committee to look at possible options to pay for it.

The city bought the Fisher Ferry property in 2003 for $325,000. It acquired a wetlands permit in 2009 when it began developing the site just north of St. Michael Catholic Church as a sports complex.

The city abandoned the project later that year after spending $2.7 million on dirt work. In 2012, the city spent an additional $85,000 to remove the concrete in the drainage chutes and replace it with riprap and grout under a mandate from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.