Construction starts on $4.3M athletic complex at Kennebunk High School
KENNEBUNK, Maine — Work on the new athletic complex at Kennebunk High School is currently under way.
“It’s just very exciting and long overdue,” RSU 21 School Board Chair Art LeBlanc said on Thursday morning.
Voters approved some of the funding for the project during the district’s annual budget meeting in May. Voters approved the district’s overall operating budget during the validation referendum on Tuesday.
A timetable for the project is available on RSU 21’s website.
The current complex has a long history and is in disrepair.
Its track, built in 2004, is cracked and filled with holes and is not suitable for competitions, LeBlanc said in a presentation about the project earlier this year. The bleachers, installed in 2006, are not structurally sound and are not compliant with the American Disabilities Act – a 2018 report on the repairs they need is four pages long, according to LeBlanc. The lights, installed in the 1980s, are outdated and their poles have been damaged by woodpeckers. The field itself has drainage issues and cannot be used for sports.
The School Board was first introduced with the concept of the new athletic complex in 2020, but the efforts to address concerns at the site began years earlier. In 2015, for instance, the district put $250,000 into its capital reserve to renovate the track – a sum that voters approved for use last month.
Earlier this year, the School Board put the project out to bid and awarded it to Heimlich Landscape and Construction, of Woburn, Massachusetts.
The total cost of the project is estimated at a little more than $4.3 million, with 10% contingency funding included, LeBlanc said during his presentation this spring. The contingency – built into the budget approved in part in May – has been put in place to cover a cost overrun, should one occur.
The funding for the project includes $2.8 million from the district’s unallocated fund balance. In October 2020, the board committed $1.25 million of the district’s remaining construction funds to the project.
The Capital Campaign Committee renewed its efforts back in November, with the goal of raising $250,000. On Thursday, LeBlanc noted that donors already have given approximately $170,000.
“We’re going to continue to raise funds throughout the construction,” LeBlanc said. “People have been extremely generous.”
The board approved the project’s engineering design and plan last summer, and the district began the permitting process in September.
New bleachers on the “Home” side of the complex will cost $258,000, and a portable set of bleachers will go for $170,000. A press box will have a price tag of $212,000. The new lighting system will be $368,000, and the track will be upgraded for $125,000.
The new complex’s synthetic turf field will support football, soccer, lacrosse and field hockey games, according to LeBlanc. The turf will be made up of virgin EPDM material of “the highest quality that we can procure,” he added, and it will be free of PSA toxins as well as from contaminants associated with recycled rubber.
Heimlich included the rubber material and its proper maintenance equipment in its base bid, according to LeBlanc.
The district is aiming to complete the complex, new track and all, by the spring of 2023 – a welcome development, given that the high school has not been able to host a track meet for the past four years, according to LeBlanc.
“That will come to an end as we get that complex renovated,” LeBlanc said.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Construction starts on $4.3M athletic complex at Kennebunk High School
