Artificial turf considered for Geneva High, but fans might have to chip in
Geneva High School sports fans will get to vote with their dollars whether to put in artificial turf at Burgess Field.
A fundraising campaign is expected to kick off at the annual All-Sports Boosters' Corn Boil in August, according to school board member Tim Moran.
It's no news to football and soccer players that Burgess Field is in rough condition. It has drainage issues.
"The field is not in good shape," said Moran, a school trustee and member of a task force that studied the district's athletics facilities. "We might get one more football season on it, maybe two."
To prevent more damage, teams practice on other grounds, and the marching band practices in a parking lot.
District 304 officials suspect drainage tiles under it are broken, because water is staying on the field instead of flowing through the tiles to a half-dozen ditches like it is supposed to.
And the field has lost its crown. Football fields may look flat, but actually are raised in the middle, to send surface water draining off to the sidelines instead of puddling up.
The field was last rebuilt in 1994 or 1995, according to Moran and John Robinson, the district's operations director. Life expectancy of a grass field is 15 years, according to the task force report.
Rebuilding the field as-is is expected to cost about $500,000. Annual maintenance - which includes sod repair, seeding, mowing and striping - is estimated at $80,000 to $120,000.
Installing artificial turf would cost about $1 million, and yearly maintenance costs are estimated at $5,000 to $10,000. The life expectancy is 10 to 15 years.
Replacing that field, however, would cost half as much the second time around, the task force estimates. That's because the first time around, the field has to be dug up, Moran said.
So, a natural-grass field that lasts 15 years, with an average maintenance cost of $100,000 per year, would run the district $2 million. An artificial field, with an average maintenance cost of $7,500, would run $1.125 million if it lasted 15 years, or $1.61 million if the field had to be replaced at the 10-year mark.
The district owns 27 acres at Keslinger and Brundige roads. When it bought the land in 2006, it anticipated building a maintenance building and a bus storage lot, and possibly athletic fields. In September, the board halted planning for the bus storage and maintenance building, citing concerns about its budget. Critics had questioned the need for them.
The task force is recommending against building sports fields there. Instead, the band, the lacrosse team and freshmen football team could practice on the physical education fields at Geneva Middle Schools North and South.
The school board believes the district should only spend what is necessary to replace Burgess Field as-is, Moran said; anything beyond that should be voluntary.
"There aren't any concrete plans yet," Moran said.
And in a tough economy, he understands the community may not be interested in spending that much.
"This is a very generous community, but everybody is hurting," he said.