By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
Staff Writer
Brandon Twp.- During the regular Monday night meeting, the Brandon Board of Education received an update on the bond projects pertaining to the athletic facilities. The projects include the middle school baseball field, the high school football field, the high school track, and the high school soccer field.
The biggest change would be the improvements to the middle school baseball field, with the intent to move the varsity team to that field over the current varsity field at Harvey Swanson Elementary School. The project would start in the summer of 2023.
“The middle school area, there was $350,000 set aside for the improvements of the baseball area. The concept was to have the varsity baseball team start to play here, at this field,” said Brian Smilnak, who is working with the district on the bond projects.
“Currently they play at Harvey Swanson. There have been several problems over the past years, basically we’ve bee losing the outfield. We keep having to move the outfield fence in. So the concept was the move the varsity team to play here.”
There are a few minor improvements to the field including removing the backstop and fencing along the baselines and moving it in 10 feet, constructing new dugouts and building a new bleacher pad. There will also be a concrete path from the field to both the parking lot and a new access door to the I-TEC Center located at the middle school for bathroom access.
The $350,000 budget for the improvements originally included construction of new bathrooms.
“We took a hard look at that and feel we can achieve that for less money by putting an additional exterior door and having additional interior doors,” said Smilnak.
This would allow use of the bathrooms in the I-TEC Center, and the extra interior doors would keep visitors from walking around the rest of the building. The change allows more funds to go towards running electricity to the field, and puts the project about $15,000 under budget.
The other improvements include replacing the current turf on the varsity football field, resurfacing the current track at the high school, and putting in turf on the soccer field, as well as other minor improvements. Those projects total will cost $1,830,000 of the bond funds.
“We’ve had much, much, much discussion on this. And currently you have a grass (soccer) field, I think the largest grass field in the county,” he said. “The boys play on it, the girls play on it, but the problem you have being grass, a lot of people love to play on grass, but it gets beat up. If it’s used a lot year-round, it does not have time to recover for next season.”
All of these projects would take place in the summer of 2023 while school is out for summer vacation.