FREEPORT — A proposal to replace crowded and overused high school athletic fields with a multimillion-dollar sports complex – including synthetic sports fields and a competition track course – may finally become a reality, 15 years after the idea was first proposed.
“I want students to play on fields they can be proud of and not an embarrassment the way they are now,” said Fred Palmer, president of the Tri-Town Track and Field Project, a nonprofit raising money for the complex.
Tri-Town aims to raise enough private donations to finance most of the $3.2 million project. To date, the group has raised about $2 million, including a $1 million pledge from Nike, and has more than 200 donors, among them local residents and businesses, Palmer said.
But the success of the project hinges on voters in Regional School Unit 5 accepting a donation for the project and reallocating $600,000 currently dedicated to renovate grass sports fields as part of a larger $14.6 million Freeport High School renovation. Voters would also need to approve another bond issue to cover the costs of construction while pledged donations come in, said Michelle Ritcheson, the RSU 5 school board chairwoman. The board wants to have the track project done by September 2017, the same time the high school renovation is completed.
“In order to meet that time line, we would need to have a November referendum,” she said.
Voters in the district, which includes Freeport, Durham and Pownal, have twice rejected similar proposals in the past five years, but Palmer is optimistic that chances of success are better this time around.
“Common sense would tell you that if you were presented with essentially $2.6 million in gifts from people in the community and Nike, you think that would be more attractive,” Palmer said, adding that the public funding being asked for is already earmarked to renovate the high school athletic fields.
The proposed complex would include an all-weather, lighted, eight-lane competition running track and synthetic turf infield for soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and football, and possibly bleachers. Tri-Town intends to use Nike Grind, a synthetic material made from recycled athletic sneakers, for the turf infill, a decision made partially to ease concerns about the possible bad health effects from turf made out of used rubber tires, according to Palmer. The decision to use a Nike product was reached after the company made its donation and is not connected to its participation in the project, he said.
The complex would replace an existing athletic area that hosts a single competition-sized field that doubles as a softball outfield and a small practice space. The single field gets overcrowded, and juggling a game and practice schedule for numerous teams is challenging. Use of the fields has to be restricted to reduce wear and tear, and poor drainage means the area is sometimes too wet to use at all, said Craig Sickels, the high school athletic administrator.
“It’s not just drainage. We just can’t spread out; there is nowhere to go,” Sickels said.
For example, in the last month since lacrosse season started, the girls’ team has been able to practice outside on the fields only twice and host a single home game, Sickels said. Freeport High is in a slim minority of high schools its size that have a track and field team but don’t have their own track, Sickels said. The 50 students in the track and field program currently practice at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. A track for the school would limit travel and give school district residents a place to run and walk when students aren’t using the track.
“Clearly, a track is a common facility that is not only utilized by the school but by the community,” Sickels said.
If the project is approved, the school will have less field space than it does now, but the artificial turf can be used continually without the wear and tear that activity puts on grass fields, Sickels said.
The project was initially proposed in 2002, when Nike offered a donation for a track and the Maine National Guard offered to complete the site work. That idea was derailed when the Guard was deployed to Iraq and Nike passed its donation to Bowdoin instead. Since then, voters have rejected versions of the project three more times, in 2008, 2011 and most recently 2013, when voters approved a $14.6 million bond for a high school renovation and addition, but rejected $1.7 million for the athletic complex. The three towns split that vote, with Freeport narrowly approving it but Pownal and Durham voting overwhelmingly against the proposal.
Part of the bond included $600,000 to repair and improve the grass fields. Advocates hope that money can be repurposed for the track project and there could be another $200,000 left over from the high school renovation to commit to the project.
The school board’s attorney has advised that voters will need to accept a gift from Tri-Town and approve reallocating the money, making the wording of a potential referendum tricky, Palmer said. His group has until September to raise the remaining funds before the school board decides whether to put the issue to voters in November.
“Everything is contingent on the voters,” Palmer said.
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