AMHERST — The Amherst Regional School Committee gave the go-ahead in mid-January, for a $4.74 million project to replace and reorient the track and interior field at Amherst Regional High School, creating a facility that, under the preferred plan, would feature an eight-lane track and a synthetic turf field.
Nearly nine months later, interim Superintendent Douglas Slaughter, who has been the district’s finance director, informed the committee last week that an advertisement is being placed seeking qualified landscape architecture and civil engineering companies that can “perform design, permitting, and construction phase services related to the project.”
With bids due on Nov. 1, Slaughter said hiring a designer is the next step in ensuring the track and field project becomes a reality and is about “articulating the piece of the work before you do the actual construction.”
“Hopefully, we’ll get some interested parties and we’ll get some interesting proposals,” Slaughter said.
Once civil engineering and landscaping design is complete, construction designs could be ready to go out to bid.
But Slaughter said segmenting the design work may be necessary to accommodate the project. “It’s likely we’re going to need a little bit of an a la carte style of design because it will depend on the funding level,” Slaughter said.
The track, built in 1999, and its field has been in poor condition for several years, leading to a series of plans and alternatives being drawn up by Weston & Sampson.
The most elaborate plan calls for the reorientation of the track and the synthetic turf interior, and is the most challenging, in part due to the proximity to wetlands and the fact that the Tan Brook runs underneath the site. It is about $700,000 more than a cheaper plan that would have a grass field.
Currently there is a debt authorization, which specifically calls for artificial turf for an interior field and eight-lane track.
“If we don’t do those things, we’re going to have to rescind that authorization,” Slaughter said.
Still, money could be a constraint on the project. There is close to $2.2 million in community funds necessary from a combination of sources, including $957,500 from Amherst’s Community Preservation Act account, $900,000 in free cash from Amherst and $11,000 from Pelham’s CPA account.
In addition, the Hurricane Boosters are continuing their Transformative Uses for Regional Fields, or T.U.R.F., capital campaign.
“It’s a complicated funding structure, and it’s not fully defined at the moment,” Slaughter said.
The next phase should allow the schools to put more concrete funding in place and figure out what the schools can afford and can’t afford, he said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
