TAMPA — Hillsborough County plans to build a $15 million sporting complex suitable for tournament soccer near the intersection of Columbus Drive and Falkenburg Road.

Sixteen fields will comprise the complex along with amenities such as a concession stand and gazebos. Hillsborough County Parks and Recreation director Dale "Doc" Dougherty said that the county continues to survey construction companies for the project, but anticipates its completion date to be in 2017.

"Our objective right now really is spring or summer by next year," Dougherty said. "Some of the companies have referred to April for being completed, but adding May, June, July … you get pretty quickly into summertime."

The complex, near the Hillsborough Community College Brandon campus, will sit in Commissioner Lesley "Les" Miller's district.

"I don't think that it would negatively affect the students," Miller said. "There will be these soccer tournaments, and it could be an economic boom for Hillsborough County."

Miller emphasized the benefits of building a sports facility by describing how Tampa could thrive off of the influx of outsiders any time a tournament is hosted. Dougherty said the fields are going to be used to showcase Tampa to the rest of the country, and will be designed strictly for local and national tournaments only.

"You really want to say that this is a tournament complex," Dougherty said. "Now that being said, we can certainly have all of our local soccer teams come together and play in one tournament, but it won't be any direct benefit to say that, hey, can local college kids just come out and play? That's not the way it's being designed right now."

A generic rendering of the complex has been put together by in-house architects, and the project's location is designed to drive up local business in Tampa, according to Dougherty. The tournament-quality fields are expected to bring many out-of-state teams to the city.

"If we have 85 soccer teams from Wednesday to Sunday playing in a major tournament … they're staying in our hotels and eating at all of our restaurants," Dougherty said. "When you look at the economic driver that those tournaments bring to our community … we're going to get a whole lot more money."

The Tampa Bay Sports Commission will also work closely with the Parks and Recreation Department to bring large tournaments to the fields once they have been constructed. The commission remains supportive of the project due to the huge volume of visitors it thinks it can bring to the community from outside of Florida.

"Our department can only do so much as far as promoting tournaments," Dougherty said. "We certainly need the specialists that deal with this every day, and that's what the Sports Commission does."

The commission will work with the chosen company to create final designs. Precise costs will then be negotiated, and then blueprints will be drawn up for the fields.

"It always takes time for government to go through the processes," Dougherty said. "Private companies can just hire whoever they want right now and have things designed quickly, but processes for government programs are to make sure everybody's had their fair chance to get in."

Contact Andrew Forest at hillsnews@tampabay.com.