Poland project nears kickoff

By Denise Dick

The renovation will increase the stadium’s seating capacity.

POLAND — A revamped Poland Seminary High School football stadium combined with new artificial turf installed last fall makes the facility accessible to more students, the boosters club president says.

The school board recently awarded contracts for the renovation project expected to get started this spring. School board members accepted Youngstown company Clearview Design’s $1,401 offer to demolish the visitors’ bleachers and foundation.

“They want the scrap,” said Superintendent Robert Zorn.

The $2.23 million stadium renovation project should be finished in time for the first football game of the 2009 season, the superintendent said.

The project includes increasing the number of home-side bleacher seats from 2,000 to 3,000. Twenty handicapped-accessible seats are among that number. The stadium doesn’t have any ADA-compliant seats, the superintendent said.

The project also calls for the addition of a press box and a pedestrian walkway leading through the stadium, renovations to lockers, construction of public restrooms on the visitors’ and home sides of the stadium, additional concession equipment, renovations to the ticket booth, a press box, an expanded parking lot and the extension of utilities.

Dennis Reardon, president of the Poland All-Sports Boosters Club, said the stadium project, combined with the artificial turf installation completed last fall, make the facility useful to more students.

“It’s just going to be a very nice venue for Poland and all of the visitors,” he said.

Soccer teams and the Poland Little Bulldogs played on the field last year. The school’s softball and baseball teams also can practice on it in early spring. The school band can also use it, Reardon said.

Before the turf installation, those teams usually staged early practices on pavement indoors because of the muddy field, Reardon said.

For many home football games, fans stand in the end zone to watch the game because the seats are filled. The additional seating will alleviate some of that, he said.

The turf and increased seating capacity may also make the school able, if the school board and administration want to pursue it, to apply to host football and soccer playoff games, Reardon said.

The price, originally estimated at $1.9 million, increased to $2.23 million when the project’s scope expanded, Zorn said.

When news spread of plans for new locker rooms on the visitors’ side of the stadium, some residents asked that the home side get the same treatment. That addition, combined with some cost increases since the project was first proposed, caused the higher price.

“It still doesn’t raise taxes,” Zorn said.

In November 2007, voters passed a 1-mill, five-year replacement levy for permanent improvements to raise $393,754.

Those funds are contributing to the costs.

“That money is restricted to bricks and mortar,” the superintendent said.

The school board awarded a $567,430 contract for bleacher seating to the Dave York Co. of Kentucky.

The general trades site work contracts totaling more than $1.4 million went to B&B Construction Co. of Youngstown.

RLM Electric Co. of Poland got the roughly $191,000 contract, and the $38,700 contracts for mechanical work went to York-Mahoning Mechanical Contractors of Youngstown.

Charniga Plumbing and Heating Co. of Poland was awarded the $155,415 plumbing contract.

The school board opted to rebid the projects for asphalt. That will be advertised in March, with a contract likely to be awarded in April.

denise_dick@vindy.com