Carbon School District Press Release
It has been a number of years since the Carbon High School baseball team was able to hold a game on a field on their own school campus. On March 9, that all changed as the team played Payson High School on their newly minted field.
“The old field had fallen into disrepair a number of years ago and the games they played were contested on the field in Helper,” said Carbon School District Superintendent Lance Hatch. “While we were very thankful to Helper for letting us hold the games there over the last few seasons, we were hearing that a lot of players were graduating without ever being able to play a game on the school’s field and we wanted to address that.”
With that became a partnership with Price City to create two new baseball fields. At the time, the district started to consider what to do with only about $1.2 million available to rehab the site. To build what was considered a good field, with the amenities needed, would have taken more money than the district had.
“The school district had been looking at building a new field for many years; in fact, there was even a design drawn up for it,” said Kerry Jensen, the Construction Manager for Carbon School District. “We even put it out to bid, but the cost came in so high we had to back off and try again to find another way to construct it.”
Enter Price City, who was looking for ways to not only improve sporting opportunities in the community, but was also looking at any kind of sport venue development as a possible economic driver in the area, such as bringing tournaments to town. The way things were at that time, the number of fields in the area were limited and no place had a real class A venue for drawing in contests that could be impactful.
“The city approached us about getting money for the project from the Utah State Community Impact Board (CIB),” stated Hatch. “But, as a school district, we had never been able to apply for that money because we were not allowed by law to do that. But, the city could. They helped us to understand that without us, there is no project and without them, there wouldn’t be enough money to build it.”
Consequently, another partnership between the two entities was established to not only to approach the CIB, but also to team up on some aspects of the construction and completion of the fields. The pair had previously worked on a number of projects that have benefited the entire community, including the city tennis courts on 300 East. That cooperation has laid the ground for a partnership on renewing the city’s indoor swimming pool in the next couple of years as well.
After a compelling presentation, the CIB board provided Price City enough money in partial grant and partial loan funding to build the fields. A total of $3.1 million was awarded to the city for the fields. The school district contributed $1.25 million and the city will use that money to pay the loan portion of the award.
“The school district and the city had come up with a plan on how to build two fields instead of one with the help of the board,” said former Price Mayor Joe Piccolo, who was in office when the partnership began. He said it was the last big project he was involved in while mayor. “The city has always been interested in working on projects that would benefit the youth of the community and this was one that we felt would also help the area in other ways as well.”
The partnership has now given the area two very impressive and functional fields to not only host high school games, but also tournaments throughout the summers.
When the work began, the old fields needed to be removed. In addition, some problems that had existed for years with ground water in the area, which could make the field swampy at times, needed to be resolved. Water often ran down from the high school football field above. The major earth work on the field was done in mid-December 2019 and the crews put in a retaining wall to keep the hill above the field from moving. Now, instead of the hill being a problem, it is a great place for people to sit and watch a game.
Jensen said much of the drainage problem actually resulted from the fact that an old French drain that had not been installed deep enough never worked right since it was put in laying on top of shale. The drain was reinstalled two feet below its previous level, and now it drains as it should.
Top soil was brought in to put on the playing surface for the sod to anchor to when it was installed. The idea was that games were to begin at the beginning of the 2020 baseball season. Then, COVID hit and everything in terms of gatherings stopped.
The two fields that were constructed are very equal in size. Both have center fields of 390 feet. Two games can be played at once, which makes it easier for teams that are traveling and have junior varsity/sophomore teams to come over for one trip. They can play on one field while the varsity game is going on at the other diamond.
“The original plans were to make it into one large baseball field and then a smaller field, but as we worked with it, we were able to build two equal-sized fields,” said Jensen.
Miles Nelson, Price City’s Public Works Director, said that the two fields are critical for the city because if they want to bring in tournaments, it will be advantageous to have the two baseball fields that are the right size for that type of event.
But, even with the best of endeavors, unforeseen costs can arise. As the project on the actual fields was wrapping up, the concession building that would include restrooms and a media box on the second story along with food services looked out of reach because the amount of money that had been expended to build the fields themselves.
The partners put their heads together. After looking at a bid of $450,000 for that construction from an outside contractor, they found a way to make the money they did have stretch farther by doing a lot of the work themselves.
“Price City became the general contractor on that building,” said Nelson. “The school district did the mechanical and electrical work on it, while the city took care of the cement work, the structure, the framing and the sheet rocking.”
The two entities will share maintenance of both fields and its structures, with the school district taking care of it during the school year and the city doing it during the summer. Expertise from both agencies will lead to a good outcome according to all involved.
There will eventually be paved parking at the north end of the complex. Some of the parking that was there before the construction on the south side of the fields will still be available, but it will be a dirt and gravel lot for the foreseeable future.
“Just to see everything that has come through this process and seeing people work together is the one thing that I am most excited about,” stated present Price Mayor Mike Kourianos. “It’s been a process where people came up with solutions to every problem that faced them.”
