Recent Brookfield High School graduate Zach Miller, top left, pulls on fencing to align it on the band bleachers that were being installed at the soccer and track field, which is being renovated to also allow for football. Student Evan Viconovic is at top right.
From our August edition:
For Jordan Weber, the project to make Brookfield High School’s athletic stadium playable for football has had a couple of takeaways.
First, the project has been a lot more work and required a lot more expertise than officials envisioned. As an example, he said the amount of concrete that had to be placed under the press boxes was “unbelievable.”
“It went from being a six-inch reinforced pad underneath these two containers to four-feet deep in some of the places, all reinforced with these specially reinforced metal plates we had to get made up just to support the specs from the structural engineer,” Weber said.
Second, the contractors working on the project have in many cases gone above and beyond what was expected of them. In some instances, contractors have donated labor and materials, or ungraded materials to the district’s benefit, officials said.
Weber, the district’s treasurer, singled out Becdel Controls of Niles, S and R Concrete of Masury and Giglio Inc. of Brookfield for doing more than they had been asked to bring the project to fruition.
Weber added that all of the contractors have worked well together and had no problem communicating so that time-sensitive jobs were done within their time frames.
“It’s been awesome to see it unfold,” Weber said.
School board member Jerry Necastro thanked the local contractors who donated to the project and went beyond the requirements of their contract “to ensure the project meets and exceeds everyone’s expectations.”
On Aug. 6, the district said the stadium will not be ready for the starts of the football and soccer seasons by at least two weeks. The first varsity home football game was to be Aug. 23 versus Hubbard, but that contest has been moved to Hubbard.
On a related issue, the board hired Advanced Land Measurement of Brookfield to survey the flat, open field to the west of the stadium for possible development of separate baseball and softball fields. The land was laid out for use as ball fields when the school was built, but never developed, Weber said. It has been used for football practice and part of the cross country course.
Advanced Land will be paid $4,000. Weber said any field construction is probably a year off.
Also in the future is serious discussion about what the board will do with the football stadium the district had used up until this year, Nicholas Field on Addison Road. “We’re kind of up in the air about what possible uses it could even be,” Weber said of the property. “My guess is that’s at least a year down the road.”
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From our July edition:
Brookfield Board of Education has awarded more contracts for the athletic stadium renovation project and established the mechanism to pay for it.
The board is abandoning its traditional football stadium, Nicholas Field on Addison Road, and renovating the soccer field and track at the school so football games can be played there.
The board on May 15 hired Giglio Inc. of Brookfield to prepare the ground where concrete will be poured for bleachers for $9,410, and to install football goal posts for $7,450. The company previously had been hired for excavation work.
The board on May 24 awarded a contract to S & R Concrete of Masury to pour the concrete for the bleacher pads. The company’s bid, $59,400, was the lowest of two.
On June 12, the board hired Baker Bednar Snyder and Associates Inc., Warren, to certify the plans for the press box for $18,500, and Kirila Contractors of Brookfield to run a plumbing line from the school to the athletic complex, at a cost to be determined, but less than $10,000.
The board also has approved a lease-purchase agreement – one of the few borrowing options available to a school district – with Farmers National Bank, said district Treasurer Jordan Weber. The arrangement will work essentially as a line of credit and the school board agreed to borrow $815,000 and pay it back over 10 years at 5.3-percent interest, about $105,000 a year.
Contractors will be paid by the bank.
The amount due from the project that is above $815,000 will come from what money is left in the middle school remediation project fund and/or the general fund, Weber said.
The board had awarded $880,420 in contracts, which does not include the money that will be paid to Team 8e architecture LLC, Canfield. Team 8e will be paid 6 percent of the project.
On June 28, Supt. Toby Gibson said the light poles had been moved from Addison Field and erected in their new homes and they were to be hooked up to electricity soon. Bleacher construction is to begin July 8. The band boosters, some present and former band members and district staff put up the bleachers for the band in the north end zone on June 28.
Gibson knocked on his noggin as a substitute for wood when asked if the work was proceeding on time for the field to be ready for football this year.
Weber said officials have started getting prices on what it will take to create baseball and softball fields at the school campus. Currently, those teams play at Brookfield Township Community Park.
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