Mayor Plowing Ahead on Turf Field for Peabody High

Mayor Ted Bettencourt says he's making good progress on "cobbling together" the $1.36 million needed to pay for a synthetic turf field at Peabody Veterans Memorial High School and naming rights are definitely not on the table.

(Here's how the total cost breaks down for a new field.)

"I am working very hard to solicit donations from private companies and I will say that naming rights is not part of the discussion. That is not something I am pursuing or will pursue," Bettencourt told the School Committee Tuesday night, addressing sharp criticism from this summer at the possibility of exchanging some naming rights for financial partnerships.

"The football field is appropriately named for an honored Vietnam veteran, Coley Lee, our track is named after a longtime athletic director who is also a veteran, George Smyrnios, and naming rights are not part of this, but I do think it's essential...to establish partnerships with private entities," Bettencourt said.

Pushing ahead on turning the turf into a reality, Bettencourt told the board he has "made it a goal to have this in place for next year."

In fact, he hopes to have all the financing lined up before the end of the year in order to start the bidding process for a summertime installation, which should take about two months.

"To me, it's not just a football field or a track, it's going to be utilized by a number of different sports...and youth programs and will be a community asset," Bettencourt said, noting many cities and towns in Eastern Massachusetts already have turf fields.

Locally, Beverly has one, Marblehead just finished installing turf, Salem is in the midst of that process now and Danvers is exploring the idea of replacing its football field with turf.

Peabody school officials have been talking about replacing the high school football field for a while now. Anyone familiar with the existing situation, well knows the mud-pit Coley Lee Field becomes after a heavy rain.

The field often takes several days to dry out afterward because the soil under the sod contains a lot of clay, which doesn’t drain very easily. There’s also a lot of ledge, which just exacerbates the problem and makes injuries to players more likely.

There are many times the conditions lead to logistical headaches for school teams, due to finding other fields to play on or outright canceling games.

School officials have tried a temporary fix by adding a soil mix to the field and repairing areas where sod has eroded, but everyone agrees that a new field -- ideally turf -- is in order. The problem was coming up with the money to pay for it.

An effort to pursue a $500,000 state open space grant was sidelined two years ago due to the fact the city didn't have a current open space plan, which is being updated now.

Bettencourt outlined a couple other options for securing the financing Tuesday night, but didn't mention any state funds. He said he will be before the city's Community Preservation Committee in October for an appropriation and will also ask the City Council for further funding.

The community preservation funds can't pay for the turf field itself, but could pay for the track or site work, for instance.

While hinting at likely private dollars coming in, Bettencourt declined to elaborate on the overall financing plan Tuesday night, but said he expects to be able to lay out those plans after the CPC request.

Board member Dave McGeney, commenting on another subject later in the meeting, joked that he was dozing off due to the late hour and just "dreamt that we voted $1 million for a turf field."

The city has hired Huntress Associates for the planning and engineering of the turf field. The Andover-based firm is regarded as an expert in this area, said Bettencourt and noted Huntress has worked in Salem, Marblehead and Gloucester. The firm also worked in Peabody before, redoing the high school track.