Land offered for Springfield High football field

A new plan to build a football stadium at Springfield High School that would reduce costs and create room for further expansion of an athletic complex was presented at a joint meeting of the Robertson County Commission and Board of Education last week.

The athletic facilities project, discussed during previous meetings, is estimated to cost in excess of $2.6 million, but last week, commissioners were presented with a reduced-cost option.

Walter McCauley, a landowner on the north side of Springfield High School, has offered to donate land for the construction of a football field, according to Gene Beck, president of the Springfield High School Athletic Association.

“It really opens up some potential for phasing-in facilities, which we would not have if we went just with that west property,” Beck told commissioners.

Project Engineer Phil Klober said there were problems with the original property because it sits on a hillside just west of campus.

“We had to move a lot of dirt to make this work and fit it on the existing property and that’s where the $2.62 million came from,” he said.

In the first plan, presented to school board members and the commission’s education and budget committees, about 70,000 yards of dirt had to be moved, Klober said.

Under the new plan, which includes the McCauley land donation, about 21,000 yards of dirt will have to be moved, he said. Using the donated land would save the county about 20 percent of the cost of the original project, or about $450,000, according to Klober.

The new plan calls for the football field to move onto about five acres of McCauley’s property directly behind Springfield High School’s cafeteria, according to plans presented by Klober. Two parking lots are planned on the donated land, to the northwest and northeast of the new field.

“The plan makes use of plateaus on the property, so we can build without moving a large amount of dirt,” Klober said. “The major things that we took into account were traffic flow, accessibility, trying to get parking lots nearer to the facilities and not having to park out in front of the building and trudge up the hill to the football field, which a lot of schools have to do.”

Once the football field is built, the school’s existing practice field would become a new soccer facility, according to Davis. The rest of the facilities will be phased-in over time, based on priorities outlined by the school board, he added.

Solid cost estimates were not provided on the first phase of the athletic facilities project, which includes the football field and soccer field conversion at the existing practice field. However, Davis assured commissioners that the cost “won’t be astronomical.”

Under the new plan, the entire cost of the Springfield High School athletic facilities project would drop to $2.175 million. That figure does not include existing debt for athletic facilities at the county’s other high schools, which comes in at a little more than $483,000, Beck said.

Springfield Middle School’s auditorium

A plan to renovate Springfield Middle School’s auditorium was also discussed last week. However, cost estimates for that project were a little harder to come by.

In their packets, commissioners received an email sent from Danny Atchley of the Robertson County Players to Davis providing several estimates for the auditorium repair project.

The total cost of the projects provided by Atchley, which included stripping and refinishing the stage floor, repairing the plaster and installing sound and electrical systems, among other things, was estimated at just under $410,000, the email said.

The largest expense, according to Atchley’s figures, was to repair and restore the original seating, the email said. The estimate came back at $315 per seat for a total cost of more than $278,000, it added.

During the meeting, Atchley’s email was mentioned by Davis in passing after a presentation from Project Manager Jason Morris, of KBJM Architects, Inc., on the middle school auditorium project, but commissioners did not discuss it.

Morris discussed briefly the cost associated with replacing the auditorium roof. Estimates ranged from $10 to $18-per-square-foot, depending on the type of roofing system selected, Morris said. He added that Springfield Middle School’s auditorium roof is about 10,000 square feet.

In addition to the roof, numerous issues were found both inside and outside the auditorium, Morris said during his time at the microphone. His company had done a structural assessment of the structure in January of 2014, finding it to be in “sound condition,” he said.

Architecturally, however, the building was not in good shape, Morris said.

Some of the problems he mentioned included missing or broken seats inside the auditorium, roof leaks, water ponding on the roof, lighting issues and HVAC issues.

One of the biggest problems associated with the building was that moisture is finding its way inside, Morris said. When the building was constructed in 1938, it included windows that have since been filled in, the architect said. The moisture from those enclosed windows is finding its way inside, leading to chunks of plaster falling off the walls as well as the bricks popping off the exterior of the facility, he said.

He recommended gutting the entire facility.

“It’s basically taking the whole room down to its core structure and then building it back,” he said.

No decisions were made at the work session.