Plum Brook fields almost ready

By SCOTT MERZBACH Staff Writer

Published on August 21, 2009

After years of challenges that included getting grass to establish itself and a 2005 townwide referendum aimed at stopping the project, new playing fields in South Amherst are almost ready to open.

Town Manager Larry Shaffer said that the Plum Brook Recreation Area, which has been delayed about two years because of ongoing issues with the condition of the turf, will have its grand opening Aug. 29, seven years after the project was first approved by Town Meeting.

"It is opening. There will be young people playing out there. Period," Shaffer said.

Linda Chalfant, director of Leisure Services and Supplemental Education, said she is looking forward to having the fields on line and ready to use this fall.

"With a multipurpose field, it opens the door for lots of opportunities," Chalfant said.

The benefits of these new fields, which will primarily be used for soccer and Ultimate matches, are many, Chalfant said. Children will be playing on safer, more level surfaces. With better drainage, there will be less mud than on other municipal fields, she said.

The Plum Brook opening also provides breathing room for the town in terms of its capacity, meaning that other locations, such as near the public schools, can have more limited schedules. Other fields will improve as a result. The first beneficiary of this process, which Chalfant compared to a farmer rotating crops, will be Kiwanis Field on Stanley Street. This field will be taken off line for a time so the field can recuperate and damaged areas can be reseeded.

The design for the Plum Brook fields, by Peter Wells of Berkshire Design Group, gives the town a chance to rotate and change the configuration of the fields, reducing the potential for worn spots. The design includes several ways the fields can be laid out.

The nearly $800,000 project, including building three regulation-size soccer fields and a practice field, installing drainage and constructing a 100-space parking lot, was approved by Town Meeting in 2002. A 2005 referendum by residents on Potwine Lane concerned about increased traffic and the large cost of the project, as well as the funding mechanism that relied on use of $500,000 in Community Preservation Act money, attempted to halt the work. But their efforts failed both at Town Meeting and in the townwide referendum.

Chalfant said the grand opening ceremony at 10:30 a.m. will include a ribbon cutting and the presentation of a check to the town for $50,000 from the Amherst Youth Soccer Association. The first 100 people will also receive honorary grand opening T-shirts.

LSSE, which handles the scheduling for the travel and recreation soccer program, will be scheduling games 21/2 hours apart at Plum Brook to manage the flow of activity in and out of the site.

Even though efforts to terminate the project failed, moving forward with it has not been easy. The project was delayed in 2006 by wet weather, and the town was cited by the state for two violations of wetlands rules. In 2007 and 2008, there were challenges in getting the grass established, with the lack of an irrigation system affecting growth and weeds choking out the grass as recently as last fall.

Even this spring, the grass still wasn't thick enough to play on, and signs were put up warning people to stay off the fields.

Finally, the grass has come along to the point that it is time to open. Too much money and time has been committed not do so, Shaffer said.

"The grass is strong enough for our young people to go out and enjoy it," Shaffer said.

But he acknowledged that the fields, which are now between 75 and 80 percent grass, probably won't be quite as nice as those of Wembley Stadium, the famous London soccer pitch.

Shaffer said he plans to work with neighbors on Potwine still concerned about the fields. He hopes to have as positive a relationship as possible with them, though he understands that traffic will be an issue whenever games are taking place.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.