Vote gives Naturals green light to pay for park upgrades

Springdale council allows bid waiver to buy padding for Arvest Ballpark

Springdale’s City Council voted Tuesday to update lighting at Arvest Ballpark.
Springdale’s City Council voted Tuesday to update lighting at Arvest Ballpark.

SPRINGDALE — With seven “yes” votes Tuesday, the City Council moved the Northwest Arkansas Naturals one day closer to its 12th first pitch of the minor league baseball season on April 4.

The council’s vote allowed the team to waive competitive bidding for new padding that protects players around the playing field at Arvest Ballpark. The padding from the foul poles to the bullpens has become warped and doesn’t sit in the track designed to secure them to the left and right field walls, said Justin Cole, Naturals general manager. Teams install the padding to protect fielders who might run into a wall trying to catch foul balls.

“If you look at them from afar, they don’t look too bad. But up close, they look pretty rough,” Cole said.

Team management will spend $23,032 with Arkansas Correctional Industries for the padding.

Patsy Christie, director of the city’s Planning Department, said the state’s prison program puts inmates to work sewing the pads, thus teaching them a trade and allowing them to give back to communities. She said the padding is a specialized product for which she and other officials searched the country when the ballpark was built.

“They build a lot of pads for high school and athletic fields around the state,” she said of the prison industries. “The pads worked out great in the first place, and you can’t beat the prices.”

The Public Facilities Board, which owns the stadium and oversees the Naturals budgets, on Tuesday afternoon approved another update for Arvest Ballpark. The team will replace the lighting fixtures on about 159 poles on the parking lot and sidewalks with LED technology.

The Curtis Stout company in Fayetteville will be awarded the $61,872 contract. Stout’s price included a 10-year warranty on parts and labor, which wasn’t offered in other bids, Jeff Windle, the director of ballpark operations at Arvest, told the board members.

He said lights on about 150 poles will be replaced.

Those lighting fixtures are original to Arvest Ballpark, Cole said. “We get more and more lights every year that go out.”

Part of the stadium will be repainted this year, and the canopies over the grandstand and entrances will be pressure washed for the third time since the stadium’s opening in 2008.

The team is 71 days from the start of the season, and Cole said he’s not sure the upgrades will be in place by opening day.

“Anything we do, we want done by opening day,” he said. “But we know, it’s not as simple as that.”

The stadium won’t see an open week without activities until mid-April.

High school teams playing at the ballpark start their seasons March 9, and Arkansas Tech University will host the team from Pittsburg (Kan.) State University on March 12.

Cole said HOK Architects (now Populous Architectural Design), which designed the stadium, left Naturals management with a plan for upgrades over the years. Cole said management has set priorities, and replacements are running ahead of the plan, often for costs lower than expected. “We’ve already been through one replacement cycle,” he said.

Major jobs planned in the next few years include replacing the field lights with LED technology in 2020. “We hope they will have the same affect on cost and improve the experience of the players and the fans,” Cole said.

He also noted the outfield will need new sod in two or three years. The infield sod has been replaced.

“The ball park still passes for brand new, but the updates are needed,” Cole said. “The stadium was designed to work this way. The improvements are not just for beauty or vanity, they are necessary.”

Council appointments

Springdale’s City Council met Tuesday and approved:

Reappointing Neil Johnson and Bill Schoonover to the Airport Commisson.

Reappointing Rick Culver and Mike Lawson to the Planning Commission.

Appointing Colby Fulfer to the Planning Commission.

Reappointing Mike Morganthaler to the Public Facilities Board.

Source: Staff Report

Laurinda Joenks can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWALaurinda.

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