ELMIRA EXCITED AS STADIUM PROJECT NEARS COMPLETION (18 PHOTOS) (2022-09-06)

By Brian Fees
Southern Tier Sports Report
ELMIRA — The days of Saturday football games, and beating the darkness for weeknight soccer and lacrosse games is about over for Elmira athletes as the school is closing in on opening its new stadium.

“Super excited,” Elmira Superintendent Hillary J. Austin said of the new stadium. “People show up outside the fences and they are looking in and eager to see the field open and excited for the debut. It’s been a long work in progress.”

The long wait is nearly over as the hope is to have the stadium open this month and the belief is they will hit the goal to be in the stadium sometime this month.

“Our focus is September,” Austin said. “I’ll leave it at September for now. We are still working through some of the fine details of being ready to open the stadium. Every day work progresses. September is our goal and it looks like we will achieve that goal.

“This has been years in the making. Just to come over and see what the field looks like put together, to see the stadium bleachers, we are excited. We are excited with lights, so obviously we’ll be able to have Friday night football games.”

Ideally when the stadium is ready teams would be able to get on the field to experience it before they play their first games on the field, but right now they are just trying to get to the stage where the stadium is set to open.

“Our goal would be to have kids be able to experience the field and not have a game be their first time being on the field,” Austin said. “We’ll have to work through that. We are taking it in stages. The first stage was to be to the point where we have the turf now and all the other pieces that have to come together to be able to use the facility, so the sound system, the lights, working concession stands ready to go, and all the finishing touches. The fencing that was needed, security cameras, all the things that are required to be able to run a successful event.’

For the Elmira School District it’s special to be able to provide facilities like this for the students.

“You go to these new stadiums, Horseheads has their brand new stadium, Corning has had there’s for a little bit, but kids see that and I think as a district we want to be able to provide them with the sam opportunities,” Elmira athletic director Zack Lloyd said. “They are going to have the newest stadium now, until someone comes along and builds something else.

“I think it means a lot to them. I talk a lot about keeping things nice, keeping things clean. What you provide for the kids is kind of what you are going to get out of them. To be able to come out to something like this for them is going to be a whole new world for them. I think they are excited for it, and I’m excited for it too.”


A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT
To get to this point has taken the work of a lot of people and organizations, and Austin knows how special it is to be to the point where the stadium is almost ready.

“The collaboration,” Austin said of the most impressive part. “It’s definitely a team effort, a group effort. I appreciate the collaboration with our partners from both Hunt (Engineers and Architects) and Welliver and then in house with our district and our board of education. There is a lot of excitement around being able to provide this for our students, our community and their families and I think the opportunity to collaborate and develop something that would be so exciting for our community is something I appreciate the most.”

One of the biggest challenges is that the stadium is right next to the high school, an area that’s had a history of problems with the soil, and that made for a to of work when it came to building the new stadium.

“Certainly the soil remediation was a huge challenge to do this project,” Jeff Robbins, of Hunt Engineers and Architects, the architect and principal on the job said. “I dare say it was probably, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever been part of. But, a lot of people came together to get it clean and make it suitable to build on.

“One of the other challenges was storm water. We have to manage all the storm water that falls onto the field and make sure everything drains well. There is a lot of work under the ground to make that work properly.”

The process to get to this point wasn’t an easy one, but the collaboration of all the groups helped to make the stadium what it is now.

“It’s been a really difficult process,” Stephen Welliver, Executive Vice President for Wellliver said. “Managing building during Covid, that has really changed the game for pretty much every contractor out there. No. 1 for materials availability, but also for labor availably. You just never know where the snafu is going to come from on a day-to-day basis. Planning for that is very difficult, especially when you are talking about having delays from the previous company cleaning the site up. It was bid over two years ago.

“We started planning years ago for this whole process. We tried to start construction about a year and a half ago and were delayed by the previous contractor that was cleaning up, so we ended up having to start late. It was pretty much for the field I think it was this past Spring, for the bleachers and concession stands and the press box, the whole building structure, I think it was last Fall.”

The dry summer both helped, and hindered, the project at times.

“It does have some benefits because you don’t lose days to rain storms or anything like that,” Welliver said. “But, there are also other challenges. It’s difficult for the people working out here, because you want to make sure you’re watching out for them and they aren’t getting heat stroke or heat exhaustion or anything like that, any heat illness. It is dangerous to work in these conditions, that’s why down South they work at night int he summertime. There are lots of challenges with that, but there are things that make it challenging like trying to get compaction when you have no moisture in the the soil, it is difficult as well so things like that make it difficult to work.”

All the time, all the efforts by so many people are coming to fruition as the stadium nears completion.

“There is a lot of work that went in,” Lloyd said. “A lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of years that went into this and our coaches now, and be being new is the beneficiary of all the work. I can still remember my first buildings and grounds meeting when I got the job in January. It was a snow day and I did it from my house and all the list of items we had to go through to get this done, I was like, ‘oh boy, what am I stopping into?’ But, to see it all pretty much to completion is super exciting for our coaches and especially for our student athletes.”


EVERYTHING THEY IMAGINED
All the hard work, all the time is paying off with a stadium that is exactly what the school dreamed of.

“Ton of pride,” Austin said. “It’s beautiful. This is exactly what we wanted and a lot went into the development and design and it turned out exactly how we had a vision of it. We are excited. It’s stunning to look at from the top.”

There are a lot of special things about the new Thomas J. Hurley Athletic Complex.

The stadium has a nice, new astroturf field.

“The manufacturer is Astroturf, which is one of the first developers of the product,” Robbins said. “It has a full cushion underneath it. It’s fully padded and as safe of a product as there can be.”

The stadium also has a lot of special features in it, including state of the art lighting, a video board and a custom press box.

“One of the neat things for this area that is unique here, the lighting is all LED, it has color capability, which is not a normal thing and it also can move and dance around the field,” Robbins said. “So, when that gets up and running it’s going to be very exciting to be able to utilize. Also, with that in mind you have a video board, there is so much other technology built into this field to make it operate.

“We have a custom press box, that is unique also, a lot of times you have a remanufactured press box, this was custom built. The structure of the whole stadium is unique, we are on helical piles, and of technical, but what that means is there are piles going down deep into the ground to support the structure because the soil was just not stable enough to build on like a normal foundation would be. That makes everything very safe and long lasting.”

The project isn’t just the stadium either, as there are also new baseball and softball fields going in.

“This is one aspect of the project,” Austin said. “Then there are the North athletic fields, which are baseball and softball, which you can see the digging is still happening on there. There are multiple pieces of this project that all come together.”

Elmira is really building up their facilities, as the field at Ernie Davis Academy will get new tuff on there, and the pool has also had upgrades with new lighting, new diving boards and blocks and some windows added to add natural light.

“I know that’s coming,” Lloyd said of the new turf at EDA. “Hopefully that begins in the summer of next year and we’ll go from there and we’ll have brand new turf up there as well. The pool just got finished, the girls started swimming on the 22nd that was the first day they could get in there. They are in there, the locker rooms, some things like that got revisions. Some of the offices upstairs (got renovated) so they are super excited, and then the boys will be able to swim in there in the winter. I know coach (Keith) Ess is excited, that was a long time coming to. Between this and baseball and softball and the pool we’ve got our hands full, but it’s nothing but good things for coaches and students.”


A SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ATHLETES
Not only will the athletes have a brand new stadium at the high school, they will have the turf field at EDA, allowing them to be one of the few places to have multiple turf fields for athletes to play, and practice on.

“I have said since the beginning we are going to have the nicest modified field in the area,” Lloyd said of EDA. It’s great (the new stadium). My office is right there, I can walk right out to the field for practice. I’ll be able to see more practices, which is really nice. And, with a second turf field it makes it a lot easier, and with the lights that adds another three or four hours to practices, especially in the beginning of the spring when there’s not enough time. We were cutting JV games short with lacrosse because with the light you have to get done, we won’t have that issue anymore, which is awesome.”

Last year there was even a soccer game that had to be stopped in overtime and declared a tie because it became too dark to finish, and that’s a problem Elmira won’t have to deal with in the future.

“Never have to worry about that type of thing again,” Lloyd said. “That adds an extra level of stress for the kids, for the officials, for the athletes, for the coaches, so we don’t have to worry about that anymore, we’ll have the great facility, which is really nice.”

Being at the high school, the new stadium just makes things easier for athletes.

“It’s an opportunity to bring the community together,” Austin said. “Having this facility at the high school allows our varsity sports to take place at the same location that students are attending school. Since we have been using the Ernie Davis facility we have been bussing students to practice and games there. It’s just a nice feeling that kids can walk out and take advantage of the facility right outside the building.”

This new facility will be something that all the athletes will enjoy.

“Obviously our football program has been successful,” Lloyd said. “But, our girls soccer team won a Section 4 Championship last year and I know they are looking to repeat. Boys soccer has been successful., lacrosse is up and coming and obviously we had a couple track athletes last year with Vicky Mordvinova and a couple folks like that who have been super successful in Section 4. So, I know athletes like that, they are excited to get out here and experience the lights and stuff like that. We are going to play soccer under the lights just like we play football under the lights, lacrosse to, so those athletes are excited to get going as well.”


EXCITEMENT BUILDING
The coaches and teams are all excited to get on the field, but the administration knows that right now they are focused on their seasons and when the stadiums ready they will be excited to hit the field.

“I talk to them pretty much every day, asking me for when are we doing this, when are we going to do this, what’s going on, can I get an update,” Lloyd said. “I know they are excited to get out here. I think transition can sometimes cause some stress and anxiety and I think they are ready to put that piece behind them and get out here. They are focused on their seasons right now. It’s been a quick preseason for them. They are focused on that and I am focused on this and I told them as soon as we can get you over here, we’ll get you over here.”

Everything is getting close to done, as the stadium project is wrapping up.

“We are putting the finishing touches on the press box,” Welliver said. “Mounting the speakers on the light poles, finishing up the turf and then they are going to be starting on the track.”

Finishing up the track will be one of the final things to complete the project.

“The track is the next step,” Austin said. “That’s why we are kind of up in the air on the date of opening. The initial surface will go down and we will be able to use the facility and they will finish up the track so it’s ready to go for our use down the road.”

There will be a celebration when the stadium is open, and while the focus is on getting the stadium open this month, no set date is in place yet.

“We will have a celebration,” Austin said. “We have not pinned down for sure the date of opening night, and we have not pinned down the date of the celebration, but we will have a celebration.”
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PHOTOS BY BRIAN FEES