Landscape Architect Articles

Assessesing Field Costs05-29-07 | News

Assessesing Field Costs

A landscape architect assessed repair of the Spring-Ford school district sports fields at $7 million, including installing artificial turf for two fields.

A common problem for school districts across the country is upkeep of athletic fields. Take the Spring-Ford school district in Royersford, a borough in Montgomery County, Penn., 32 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Spring-Ford hired a landscape architect to assess the district?EUR??,,????'???s 24 fields. The findings? Additional maintenance would not produce any significant return. Although most of the fields have been constructed in the last five years, a combination of high usage and less than perfect engineering (poor drainage, soil packing, lack of pathways and proper orientation) are the reasons for the negative assessment.

The recommended field repairs are estimated at $7 million, based on replacing two heavily used practice fields with synthetic turf. The synthetic turf would cost the school $800,000 upfront, but have little maintenance cost and provide 255 ?EUR??,,????'??usage gains?EUR??,,????'?? per year without wear. By comparison, natural sod for those two fields were estimated at an initial cost of $275,000, with $15,000 in maintenance per year, plus significantly fewer usages per year. The recommendation for the major stadium field is to keep the natural turf.

The landscape architect noted the condition of the district?EUR??,,????'???s sports fields was average.