Although the Perry City Council last November approved a payment of $163,000 for “substantial completion” of work on the four-field Pattee Park soccer complex on W. Fifth Street in Pattee Park, the council this week judged the quality of the turf to be unacceptable.
“I was down there last week and walked the field and looked,” council member Chuck Schott said at Monday’s meeting, “and I was somewhat stunned. There’s wide swathes that have no grass in them. They’re just weeds. And there’s rocks just about every place you look. There’s a ton of work to be done down there.”
Council member Randy McCaulley was also dissatisfied with the seeding of the grounds.
“I walked that field as well,” said McCaulley, former superintendent of the Perry schools. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I really couldn’t. I’ve seen a lot of fields put in during my lifetime. This is by far the worst I’ve ever seen, ever.”
Matt Ferrier, Perry’s engineering consultant with Bolton and Menk, said the city has been “diligently working on the soccer complex” and has been in communication with the contractor, Polk City-based Springlake Construction, to determine “how we were going to correct the situation.”
Ferrier said an independent assessment of the work was made, and the information was given to Springlake and its bonding agent, West Des Moines-based Merchants Bonding Co.
“The city attorney here provided a letter to Springlake Construction as well as their bonding agent, requesting their assistance in completing the project,” Ferrier said. “Since that time, we’ve had some conversations with Merchants Bonding as well as Springlake Construction. I don’t want to speak out of turn for them, but I believe they are coordinating between the two on hiring another construction firm to assist them in completing the surfacing condition of the fields.”
Dean Quirk, owner of Springlake Construction, attended Monday’s council meeting and explained his plan for reseeding the grounds.
“We have hired JM Landscaping out of Ames,” Quirk said. “I think they were on you guys’ recommendation, and they’re doing seeding and stuff like that. They’ve looked at it twice, and they’re going to start in about a week or so with the grading.”
Council member John Andorf noted no work at the soccer fields occurred during May or June.
“Was there any recent grading done, and will it be top dressed before we seed it?” Andorf said. “I was disappointed about what I saw and what I didn’t see in terms of progress or moreso lack of progress.”
Andorf noted “that whole project, the soccer complex project, had a lot of community support and a lot of donor support, in some cases some big donor support as well as a lot of small donors. I really feel like we owe them a lot to get that done. I feel like we’ve let them down so far, to be quite honest.”
Quirk said the seeding window opens Aug. 15, and he expects JM Landscaping to start seeding by Aug. 20
“They’re professional seeders,” Quirk said, “and they think they can get it growing good out there.” He said the landscapers are “going to tear it up and reseed it all. They’re going to hydroseed it rather than conventional seed it, which is a lot more expensive, but you get better results.”
“The critical point is going to be hitting our fall seeding dates,” Ferrier said. “If we have good seeding weather this fall, hopefully we’re playing on it likely late summer or fall next year as we stand at this point.”
Ferrier said the city is protected from financial liability.
“We’re holding onto retainage and have not pushed forward with any payment,” he said, noting that Springlake Construction is “technically within their liquidated-damages period of the project, so they are liable for $500 a day after the completion date,” which was Oct 31, 2016.
The $680,000 complex is located west of the Pattee Park baseball and softball diamonds between W. Fifth Street and Diagonal Road and features four soccer pitches plus a wetland buffer trail and retention pond.
Plans for the soccer complex were first unveiled in August 2014. The Perry Soccer Club immediately donated $10,000 toward the soccer field portion of the Pattee Park complex, with the Hotel Pattee adding another $5,000 to the fund.
The city of Perry landed $100,000 in matching funds in October 2014 from the Iowa Department of Transportation’s Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP) program to pay for the phase I pond and buffer, and Tyson Fresh Meats donated $100,000 toward the buffer trail and retention pond in the summer 2015.
Along with the Tyson pledge, other local business, industry and civic groups contributing to the athletic fields were ITC and the Bock Family Foundation.
The Perry City Council in February 2016 accepted a $450,000 bid for the job from Polk City-based Spring Lake Construction, which met its target finish date of Oct. 31.
