Turf burns: Brady Street Stadium work faces challenges

Font Size:

By Andrew Petersen | Thursday, March 27, 2008 |

Jeff Cose, a Midwest Field Turf employee, works on preparing the rock base at Brady Street Stadium, where a new artificial surface will be installed. (Jeff Cook/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

Snow, then ice. More ice followed by snow.

This winter wasn’t easy on the Quad-Cities, and for most, spring weather can’t come soon enough.

Still wrapped in heavy white plastic, a pile of artificial turf has had perhaps the longest wait the past few months, sitting in the southwest corner of Brady Street Stadium since mid-November. The Davenport School District is getting antsy as well.

And weather hasn’t even played the biggest role in keeping the turf rolled up. But the state of limbo should end soon for the field’s revamped surface.

The district plans to finally install the FieldTurf — a combination of grass-like fibers in-filled with rubber and sand — this week.

What began at the end of last year’s St. Ambrose football season as a month-long project morphed into a four-month adventure. An end is in sight, but the undertaking isn’t finished just yet.

Troubles begin

On Nov. 10, St. Ambrose slammed past Trinity International 42-7 to finish the home portion of its football schedule. The days of the stadium’s AstroTurf were done.

Two days later, the Davenport School District got to work.

Old turf up, new turf down. Simple enough principle.

But the one-month timeline for the project took barely two weeks to shatter.

“They discovered the problem at the end of November when they tore up the old turf,” said Donna Cooper, the district’s interim director of operations. “It took a good month longer to find an appropriate solution.”

The problem was obvious. The answer wasn’t so clear.

When the AstroTurf, a flat carpet-like surface, was first installed in August 1998, a new drainage system went in, too. And it worked fine for the 10 years the turf was down.

Once workers pulled up the AstroTurf, though, they found something different than the high-grade gravel thought to be layering the field beneath the turf.

“We call it dirty rock,” Cooper said. “It doesn’t drain like we needed. It was old and hard with a rubber base.”

So a quick facelift no longer would cut it.

The work order had to be changed, but the revisions had to clear the school board, the installers and the FieldTurf company. After more than a month of resubmitted proposals being passed around, construction resumed in early January.

“We were told by FieldTurf that the design of it, had the gradation of gravel been what it was supposed to be, we wouldn’t have had to do anything beyond tearing up the old turf and installing the new turf,” district director of athletics Paul Flynn said.

No such luck.

Yet another new drainage system was required at an additional cost of roughly $168,000. By the time the project is completed, the total cost is estimated at $770,000.

Since work resumed early this year, adjustments have had to be made as snow and ice blanketed the area. With mountains of semi-frozen slush still piled high beyond the south end zone, a pair of perforated rain pipes have been tucked under 4 inches of clean gravel and 2 inches of even finer rock.

Everything appears in place for the turf to be unrolled onto the field beginning Monday.

Turf transformation

The background of AstroTurf is fairly well-known.

First laid down in 1964, the brand gained prominence once major league baseball’s Houston Astros began playing on the surface at the AstroDome in 1966.

Nearly two dozen competing artificial surfaces have come and gone since then.

When the school district installed the turf 10 years ago, the surface was an infinitely better option than natural grass.

Bill Good, the previous director of operations for the district, was extremely pleased with the choice, but he knew it wasn’t permanent.

“That AstroTurf was the best available system at the time,” he said. “One of the problems with the existing turf, it wasn’t a bad idea, but like with new computers, what it is is there’s a progression of materials to use on fields.”

A rash of injuries and improved technology have rendered traditional AstroTurf obsolete.

“It’s basically nothing more than a carpet with a rubber matting underneath it, much like an office,” said Good, now the operations director for the Des Moines public schools.

FieldTurf and competitor ProGrass — used at Augustana’s Ericson Field — have been around for more than a decade in professional and college sports. Only recently have they become popular at the high school level.

More closely resembling natural grass, modern turf is significantly softer. For sports such as soccer, which also is played at Brady Street Stadium, the longer turf provides truer rolls and bounces than AstroTurf.

“I think it’s going to be a more durable field,” Flynn said “People who have had it are telling us that. We are hoping we are going to get our 10 to 12 or more years out of it before we have to do anything again.”

Heavy traffic

Durability is key.

With four high schools, six middle schools and a university using the field, it was longevity that pushed the school district away from natural grass in the late 1990s.

The AstroTurf installation cost $1.1 million in 1998, and the surface lasted through the expected 8-to-12-year lifespan.

“It’s one of the most heavily used fields in the Midwest, unquestionably,” Good said.

School board president Patt Zamora credits the initial switch to turf to cutting down on major injuries, which occurred with alarming frequency when the natural surface got soggy.

AstroTurf was notorious for nasty rug burns, but it caused fewer broken bones.

Zamora is grateful for the local option sales tax, which she said is responsible for funding the current renovations.

Finishing touches

The Davenport Ladies Invitational is slated for April 1 at Brady Street Stadium.

Track meets at the stadium don’t use the infield so the turf that is down by then simply will be roped off.

The project won’t be finished, but the show will go on.

All the workers, machinery and plastic wrapping should be out of the stadium by April 15. That’s welcome news for the Davenport Central track teams, which have been using the facilities at North and West high schools in the interim.

This summer, the track will be resealed as well, completing the renovations.

By late August football will return to the stadium

“It’s going to be a wonderful field,” Cooper said. “The kids are just going to love it.”

With all the hassle and effort, the district is hoping the affection lasts as long as the turf.

Andrew Petersen can be contacted at (563) 383-2288 or apetersen@qctimes.com.