SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/726375
FACILITY & OPERATIONS 14 SportsTurf | October 2016 www.sportsturfonline.com drain on the edge." To prevent tons of material from disappearing, the barrier must first be rolled over the infield. Once that's in place, Baker's Construction Services, of Bluff City, TN will bring in 450 truckloads of rock and manufactured sand for the field base, which will weigh in at more than 10,600 tons. "We'll be placing the material with a dozer and a grader and run a robotic total station," Baker said. They'll use Universal Total Station UTS site-measure- ment technology provided by SITECH Mid-South. Crews will place and compact the field base. When complete, the base will rise to a height of more than 3 feet and will be measured in 10 different locations, three times each, before being approved for use. At the same time, T&B Equipment of Ashland, VA, which specializes in event seating, will build the first series of risers. Overall, multiple seating companies will add more than 5,000 seats to the infield. Builder J.A. Street and Associates, of Blountville, Ten- nessee, will also be on site, clearing out the Goodyear Tire Building, the lower level of the Infield Media Center, and Victory Lane areas for transformation into team and referee locker rooms and meeting space. By Thursday, Aug. 25, according to a construction sched- ule, tons of rock and sand will be in place for inspection and ready for AstroTurf to install the field green. The company will begin that Thursday to complete a grid survey, to make sure it's NCAA-compliant. "We'll work with him [Baker] on that last day doing the final touches on it and we'll be putting up the field goal posts," said Mitchell Truban, director of construction at AstroTurf. "Chad has already poured some concrete pads for us and they're custom field goal posts that are, most of them are 10-foot high, this is 14-foot high, because we have to go down a lot more than normally. It's unique for this field." The field goal posts will be placed as Baker's crew completes the stone drainage base. Once the grid survey is signed off, the turf will be installed, Truban said. AstroTurf will employ its 3D3 playing surface, which boasts a shorter, denser turf carpet that provides more fiber and requires less infill, Truban said. The field also features the RootZone infill stabilization system, a texturized layer of fiber that curls down into the surface, creating a net-like matrix that stabilizes infill. This reduces "splash" during play and provides grass-like B y the time you read this we'll know who won the Pilot Flying J Battle at Bristol game between the Volunteers of the University of Tennessee and the Hokies of Virginia Tech, played in the infield of the Bristol Motor Speedway (BMS). Attendance was expected to surpass 150,000. Sports Turf Managers Association member Sports Con- struction Management Inc., (SCM) Lexington, NC consulted on building the AstroTurf field in the infield of the famous racetrack in Bristol, TN, and STMA member Wes Howard from SCM led a team that installed the field, along with an install crew provided by AstroTurf. SCM is the Mid-Atlantic distribu- tor for AstroTurf. Joey Alexander, CEO of Sports Construction Management, told SportsTurf that his company was "thrilled to be involved in this historic experience. We were asked to consult with the general contractor who built the field since he had never done one before." Bristol Motor Speedway owner Bruton Smith hired local contractor Chad Baker to build the field; Baker has done most of the work at the Speedway over the years. "There were no hitches in the construction," Alexander said. "It truly was a heroic effort, given there were only 21 days between the last night race at Bristol and game day." Alexander credited Mitchell Truban, director of construction for Astro- Turf, Adam Rust, BMS senior purchasing director, and local general contractor Chad Baker, president of Baker's Construc- tion Services, for working well together to get the job done. Alexander said he didn't think using natural turf was ever considered given the time frame; "sod would have been a lot more risky," he said. He said that all the field materials will be rolled up after the game and either re-installed elsewhere or stored on BMS property for re-use there. The base materials also will be kept for later use on BMS property or elsewhere, he said. DETAILS ON THE BASE The following information on the field's base construction is from an article written by Robert Sorrell of the Bristol Herald Courier. "The first step in building up the field is installing a heavy- duty fabric barrier. The speedway's infield is normally slightly concave, allowing water to drain to the middle," [BMS general manager Jerry] Caldwell said. "A football field must drain to the edges. "So it kind of has that crest in the middle," Caldwell said. "We have to raise the middle of it to get it that high so it will 150,000 EXPECTED TO WITNESS HISTORIC GAME AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY