Photo Credit Belleville Township: Mayor Michael Melham, right, and Deputy Mayor Thomas Graziano on Saturday showing budding Belleville athletes the plan to enhance and enlarge the athletic fields behind Belleville High School.

A boy from the local Little League was holding a dripping ice cream cone and surveying a bulldozer and an excavator.

His eyes lit up as Mayor Michael Melham explained to him that these monstrous machines will soon help create an expansive turf field out of all the dirt and rock surrounding him.

Saturday morning’s groundbreaking ceremony behind Belleville High School represents the starter’s gun on construction of a sweeping $5.5 million project to enhance and enlarge the athletic facilities in the township.

The highlight of the plan will be a new track that will allow the high school boys and girls teams to host home meets for the first time in several years. And because the plan is to build an eight-lane track, Belleville will be able to host New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association-sanction state track meets.

The project will also include a new turf surface and state-of-the-art LED lighting for the football field and a soccer/softball field that will be created from the adjacent smaller baseball fields and land recaptured from a redesigned sloped retaining wall.

The new field inside that track could be used for anything from marching band rehearsals to football practices to soccer games.

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Photo Credit Belleville Township: Belleville officials breaking ground Saturday on a $5.5 million project that will include a new eight-lane track.

Photo Credit Belleville Township: Mayor Michael Melham said Saturday the plan to transform Belleville's athletic facilities represents "Belleville's most monumental public works project in probably 50 years."

Photo Credit Belleville Township: Township Manager Anthony Iacono said the $5.5 million renovation of the athletic facilities will bring entertainment to budding athletes for generations.

Photo Credit Belleville Township: A rendering showing how the new facilities will look, along with the football field - which will soon be covered with new turf.