VIDALIA — Recreation district No. 3 officials have decided to go ahead and buy a parcel of land for a new recreation complex.

The decision was made a couple of weeks ago, and the board reaffirmed the decision at its meeting Tuesday night, Recreation District No. 3 President Marc Archer said.

The district will buy 20 acres of land, located near Wal-Mart, at approximately $17,000 an acre.

The City of Vidalia has agreed to buy an additional 30 acres adjacent to that to lease to the recreation district for development.

“As we stand right now, we are waiting on City of Vidalia’s attorney to get with recreation board’s attorney and draw up an agreement between the agencies,” Archer said.

At present, there are not any solid plans for the development of the land.

“We don’t have any definite plans as far as a date we can tell the public the facility will be completed by,” Archer said. “We do want to have some public meetings when we get into the actual hard knocks of the facility, but that’s premature right now.”

Right now the district has limited funding, and those involved are looking at ironing out the details about funding.

“We have got to look at the ways we can use the limited funding to do the project,” Archer said. “Three years ago we wanted to buy this land at $10,000 an acre, but for several reasons that was tabled. Now it’s at $17,000 an acre.”

Archer said he sees the land as a good investment for the district.

“Even if we decided not to do anything with the land, the land can be sold,” he said.

Archer also said the recreation district had been misinformed earlier when they were told they had to have the permission of the police jury to buy the land.

The police jury tried to host a public hearing about the buying of the land Feb. 11, but recreation district officials did not attend.

Archer later said the district officials did not know they supposed to be at the meeting.

The district receives funding from a tax millage of 3.89 mils.