Blog note: this article references a June 2015 grand jury report.
The long legal turf battle over the synthetic fields at the Redding Soccer Park is over.
The city settled its lawsuit against Surface America Inc. earlier this year for $500,000, City Attorney Barry DeWalt said Wednesday.
The city sued the company in September 2014, about seven years after the soccer park opened in east Redding off Old Oregon Trail.
The lawsuit said that defects in the soccer fields were covered under the Surface America warranty.
“Essentially, it was the highest amount we could negotiate,” DeWalt said of the $500,000 settlement.
The city had asked for “a lot” more — DeWalt did not know the exact amount — but the $500,000 figure was eventually arrived at through negotiations with Surface America.
“Now that the lawsuit (is settled) we can get past the wait-for-the-shoe-to-drop stage and we can all sit down and figure out what is the strategy” to fix the fields, said Bryan Erickson, board president of the Soccer Regional Soccer Association, which leases the soccer park from the city.
At this point, the city does not know what it will do with the settlement money.
DeWalt said the city could choose to take the $500,000 or it could take up to three fields of turf at a value of $125,000 per field with the difference paid in cash.
“If the city elected to take cash but also one field of turf, we would get the turf for the one field and then $375,000 in cash,” DeWalt said.
Soccer park officials, coaches and fans say the artificial turf began breaking down about a year after the $10 million complex opened in 2007.
Large areas of turf have been black for years, a conspicuous sign of the failing fields.
Nearly a year after the city sued Surface America, the Shasta County grand jury released a report titled "Turf Troubles in River City" in which it blamed the field conditions on ineffective management between the city and Shasta Regional Soccer Association.
When the grand jury report came out in June 2015, it stated the synthetic turf was good for two or three more years, and to replace it would cost $1.5 million.
Redding Mayor Brent Weaver said he has heard that the cost to replace the turf on all four fields would be approximately $4 million.
“We have got to figure out how to repair at least one, or at least two of the worst fields ASAP because for anyone spending time out there, the conditions are terrible,” said Weaver, who has kids who play soccer at the park. “We have made a large investment, this community, with this soccer park and over the last few years we have had a record number of signups and are making progress out there. We want to continue to do that.”
The Shasta Regional Soccer Association, a nonprofit, is financially responsible for paying the utility bills at the park, maintenance and staffing. Erickson said his group has done this since opening day without support from the city.
Erickson said they are working on a capital campaign to raise money for new fields and recently completed a feasibility study that told them a realistic fundraising goal is $700,000 to $1 million.
“That is not enough ... so we need to look at other options and we have to work with the city to try to figure out what resources they can tap into,” Erickson said.
The latest development on the fields at the Redding Soccer Park comes as Red Bluff High School has made the decision to relocate all its home football and soccer games this year due to unsafe conditions on the school’s field turf. The synthetic turf there was installed 11 years ago and recently failed an impact test after poor drainage from heavy rains turned the field brick-hard.
Weaver said the soccer park fields are safe to play on but the city continues to monitor the conditions.
“We certainly don’t believe we have a situation at the soccer park like they have in Red Bluff, but we would like to take care of it before it becomes a situation like Red Bluff,” Weaver said. “It’s still a safe environment. We wouldn’t allow anybody to play games out there if it were not safe.”
Erickson agreed.
“It is safe and we are doing our best to keep the fields where they are playable given the reality that they didn’t last like we thought they would,” Erickson said.
Redding Record Searchlight
August 30, 2017
By David Benda
No comments:
Post a Comment