Synthetic Field, New Athletic Complex Pitched for NHS

The preliminary price tag for a new field complex at Narragansett High School is about $2.4 million, according to an athletic facilities design firm.

However, it’s a price that several town officials seemed open to fundraising toward during a meeting Monday night about the firm’s findings.

William J. Seymour, the director of the civil engineering group of Gale Associates, said the town’s current facilities are being overused.

“It’s been an absolutely heroic effort from Dave [Correira, the supervisor of the grounds],” he said.

According to a usage audit done by Gale Associates, some fields of Christofaro Park have as many as 484 usages a year, with a usage consisting of a two-hour session by any sports team. Typically, Seymour said that around 250 is the maximum healthy usage of a field.

The picture is even more dire with other fields.

For example, the high school football field is booked for 250 uses a year, but this number is artificially low because there are no lights. In addition, because it handles the heavier sports – football, boys’ lacrosse – there is a multiplier on usage, spiking it up to 350.

In all, 3,800 usages are held across 14 town fields in a typical year. According to Gale Associates’ audit, only Little Sprague and the high school softball field have an appropriate number of uses.

Seymour said that about 280 people participated in a survey about the town’s athletic fields. Half identified upgrading the main field complex – the high school football field – as their top priority.

“Some of the comments were fairly uniform and compelling,” he said. “This is what the survey’s telling us, this is what the needs assessment is telling us.”

Most were also receptive to a synthetic field. About 70 percent of respondents were OK with a synthetic field.

Gale Associates’ estimate of replacing the grass field with a synthetic field, installing a new concessions booth and proper grandstands, and installing a track facility was about $2.4 million.

Town councilor Chris Wilkens asked Seymour how flexible the price was. Seymour said that his firm does about a dozen installations a year, and over the past three years there hasn’t been much of a price fluctuation.

Seymour added that currently, the town is already sinking in about $25,000 a year on maintenance for the high school football field. A synthetic field can also be scheduled up to 600 times a year, more than double a natural field.

Narragansett resident James Durkin said he favored a synthetic field, having seen others in action.

“I’ve been to the Moses Brown facility and it’s phenomenal,” he said. “I think it’s very important that people go to Moses Brown and see that facility.”

If the town stuck with a natural field, Seymour said there were time considerations that came into play.

“Ninety percent of the [synthetic] projects we did this summer are finishing next week and are available for football,” he said. “If you use natural grass or turf, it comes offline for theoretically two years.”

School committee chairwoman Tammy McNeiece said she realized the $2.3 million figure could dissuade some people.

“We’re going to try to figure out the best way to proceed in the next couple of months,” she said. “They are zero to little maintenance costs, but there is that big upfront cost. And if you go natural grass, the field might be offline for two years.”

Seymour warned against a piecemeal approach, noting that one upgrade could trigger code violations with other aspects of the field. For example, a significant project to upgrade the lights and nothing else could force the town to make the bleachers ADA compliant at the same time.

“You need an integrated approach,” he said. “Don’t do bleachers without doing the track, don’t do the field without doing the bleachers, don’t do the field without doing lights.”

McNeiece said she realized the funding aspect would be the hottest issue when it came to town taxpayers. She stressed that a non-profit fundraising group – Narragansett Back on Track – had been formed to start toward the millions needed.

“In this economy, the school department certainly doesn’t have that kind of money,” she said. “In Exeter-West Greenwich, they raise $1.1 million over seven years. The rest came from grants.”

McNeiece said the school department had authorized an additional $17,000 for Gale Associates, which would be used to draw up schematics for the town’s fields. The schematics could then be used to approach corporate sponsors, or parties interested in buying naming rights.

Wilkens expressed cautious optimism for the project, especially putting in a synthetic field.

“I like the whole idea,” he said. “I don’t like piecemeal things. If you’re going to go for something, just go and do it.”