BROWNSTOWN
Some of the interior construction work has started at Brownstown Central High School, and dirt should be moved to kick off the exterior work in the coming days.
Remodeling of locker rooms recently began, and EMCOR Construction Services of Indianapolis plans to work on other indoor projects as it can while school is in session, said Jade Peters, the corporation’s business manager. That will kick up a notch in the summer to finish the remaining interior work.
Bids for the athletic improvements project were opened March 1 and awarded during Tuesday night’s board of trustees meeting in the high school cafeteria.
King’s Trucking and Excavation Inc. of Seymour was the lowest at $1,614,005, said Matt Gullo with Kovert Hawkins Architects of Jeffersonville.
Other bids were $1,616,455 from Lawyer Excavation Inc. of Seymour, $1,977,800 from Mitchell & Stark Construction Co. Inc. of Medora and $2,109,400 from Dave O’Mara Contractor Inc. of North Vernon.
Bids included $122,000 in soft costs including architectural, engineering, financing and legal fees.
King’s Trucking and Excavation had the second-lowest base bid at $626,480 but was the lowest on four of the seven alternates and the artificial turf football field option.
Plans call for the exterior work to begin next week, while the turf field should be completed by the beginning of August. The entire project should be done by the end of September.
Peters said the base bid for the exterior work includes the costs to install the turf field and the new eight-lane track and move dirt and replace it with gravel.
Sprinturf, based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, will install the turf field. During a school board meeting in March 2017, Randy Hammond with Sprinturf said the company holds a patent on an all-rubber infill artificial turf system, which is the safest type of infill to have on a field and is most like a pristine, natural grass feel.
Hammond said he has experience installing turf on football, soccer and baseball fields since 2009, including more than 40 fields at Indiana high schools and universities. Peters said Sprinturf did Seymour High School’s varsity soccer field.
The current football field will be dug out about 2 feet, and rock and drainage pipes will be put in place, Peters said.
“They get that to whatever level they want it, and then they’ll come in on top of that and put in a cloth fabric. It’s a real thin sheet,” he said. “Then they’ll put in that shock pad, which is an inch and a half, and then put in turf itself with carpet and rubber pellets.”
Peters said the shock pad improves the Gmax rating and makes the field safer. A Gmax test is conducted to test the impact of the surface, and there is an antimicrobial application that protects bacteria from forming on the surface.
That turf option will cost $55,875.
“We just want to make sure we’re creating the safest field possible, and we were able to fit that in our budget, so it was an option that the board decided to go with,” Peters said.
Kovert Hawkins has presented two designs for the turf layout, but school officials have yet to make that decision, Peters said.
One has green turf, a black and red Brownstown Central logo in the center of the field, red coaches’ boxes on each side of the field and a black end zone with “Braves” in red lettering on both ends. The other one is the same except with black coaches’ boxes and a red end zone with “Braves” in white lettering.
The other exterior work includes redoing the entrance to the stadium and the visitor’s bleachers and making both compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, adding a fence-in 4-foot-wide walkway around the perimeter of the track, constructing a new field events area and adding 132 parking spaces to the lot near the entrance to the football stadium and gymnasiums.
Sitting back nearly 20 feet from the existing curb, the entrance concept will help flow traffic into the stadium, give people a place to congregate or wait for someone to pick them up and be safer, Gullo said.
A front-facing ticket booth with two windows will allow ticketing to be done before entering the gate, and a large canopy entrance area will keep ticket-takers out of the elements. There also will be plaza space with a low brick wall for people to sit and congregate.
The north end of the football field will be a D zone with artificial turf to be used as practice space.
The track will be refurbished and expanded from six lanes to eight, which will allow the school to host larger meets. The pole vault and long jump areas will remain on the south end of the football field but will be on a track surface.
In the grassy area south of the track, the discus area will be redone, and the shot put area will be added behind the high jump pit. The high jump area also will have a track surface.
Installing new drainage for the football field and track will help prevent sporting events from being rained out.
At the same time as the turf project, the contractor will use some of that soil for preparing the new parking lot, Peters said.
To help with traffic flow, the entrance to the parking lot along West Bridge Street will be widened to include one way in and two turn lanes out, and a right-turn-only exit will be added near the last row of spaces in the new parking lot. The lot will have three entrances, and six new light poles will be installed.
The football field and track project should be completed by Aug. 1 so it doesn’t interfere with football games. The track and field teams will have all of their meets on the road this spring and will practice somewhere on campus.
The interior project includes heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades in the agriculture, industrial arts, technology, consumer science and band classrooms; cafeteria; guidance office; old athletic office area; teacher’s lounge; and small office areas.
Heating and cooling units will be placed on the roof of the school building. They will get rid of the old, noisy units that sit under windows, freeing up space in the rooms so it can be used for other purposes, Kevin Livingston with EMCOR said during a public hearing in January.
They will be tied into the energy management system, and there will be new acoustical ceilings, LED light fixtures and lighting controls. Peters said LED lights last longer, are cheaper and save money.
The 1963 locker room underneath the north end of the main gymnasium, the 1999 locker room on the east end of the gym, the 1963 restrooms, all single-occupancy restrooms, the band room and the teacher’s lounge all will be renovated.
The locker rooms and restrooms will have new plumbing fixtures, partitions, flooring, paint, electric hand dryers, acoustical ceilings and LED light fixtures. The showers in the 1963 locker room also will be remodeled, and new lockers and floor benches will be installed.
The band room refurbishment will include new carpet tile flooring, painted walls, secured instrument storage units, larger dedicated practice rooms, an expanded dressing area, sound-absorption panels and soundproof entry doors.
The interior project also will include replacing perimeter windows with insulated glass units to make them more efficient. Those windows also are from the original school building in 1963.