Building For Baseball

This year's baseball season is now a memory. But any true baseball fan will tell you that spring is always just around the corner — and in Savannah, Ga., the city is already getting ready for next season with a field reconstruction project at its Bacon Park recreation complex.

Officially known as the Bacon Park Athletic Fields Renovation project, the work will ultimately result in a baseball complex built around three new baseball fields. The new fields will replace three aging fields previously used at the site.

Savannah-based EDC Services, Inc., which focuses on projects in southern Georgia and northern Florida, was named as contractor for the project. The construction effort involves removal of three existing baseball fields, regrading of the entire site, and construction of three new baseball fields, plus installation of an irrigation system and new bleachers, construction of a central concrete-paved plaza, and construction of a new deceleration lane at the entrance to the park as well as construction of asphalt-paved parking area. Jim Collins is project manager for EDC.

Soil Safe Technologies, working as a subcontractor to EDC Services, is handling site work and grading as well as paving and curb and gutter construction.

One key to this project, the contractor notes, has been the selection of equipment suitable to handle the tasks at hand. Working with Brian Deal of Low Country Machinery, the JCB dealer in Pooler (Savannah), Ga., EDC settled on two machines. A JCB JS-220 excavator, outfitted with a 48-inch bucket, was chosen to handle major excavation and other heavy work for the duration of the project; a JCB 214S backhoe loader was also brought on-site to handle lighter excavation and material handling work during the early portion of the job.

One of the first jobs to be handled on the project was clearing of approximately one-third of the site. Using the JS-220 excavator, EDC went to work removing vegetation from the site. As clearing progressed, EDC's Case 880 excavator was also utilized to aid clean-up and tree removal.

Site work subcontractor Soil Safe was particularly busy during the preliminary portions of the project, keeping a John Deere 550G LGP dozer busy throughout the site preparation phase. In addition, Soil Safe used an Ingersoll-Rand roller to provide compaction as required.

From the beginning, water was a challenge on the site.

"Getting the water out was a tough job," notes Collins, who adds that a well point system was installed to dry out the site and allow construction to move ahead.

To aid with future drainage at the site, a swale was constructed along the south side of the ball field area. A subdrain was also installed during the site work phase behind what will become the parking lot. Following trench excavation — typically to a depth of about 4 feet — crews placed #57 stone and perforated pipe. The drainage system feeds a detention swale which is being constructed at the back of the site.

Excavation of the swale, like much other excavation on the project, has been handled by the JS-220. But cutting that pond site has been a challenge. The pond site is located in the midst of a fairly densely wooded area, but project foreman and excavator operator Tim Nary has had no trouble maneuvering the JS-220 amidst the trees.

A number of utility trenches have had to be cut during the course of construction, not only for irrigation lines but also for storm sewer lines and to connect future concession and restroom facilities to a nearby sewer line. To make these cuts, EDC has used not only its JCB JS-220 excavator but also a JCB 214S backhoe loader. That latter machine, which is outfitted with a 1.4-cubic-yard loader bucket with forks, has handled a variety of jobs on the project — not only excavation of trenches but also material transport and clean-up work.

The deepest cut required during the renovation was the 16-foot-deep cut needed to link the project's central area, with its future concessions and restroom complex, to an existing sewer line.

With the completion of the utility installation, crews will begin to place and compact fill to bring the site to its new grade. Ove all, the site will be raised by about 2 feet; this will require placement of close to 3,000 cubic yards of fill. The fill material will be trucked in from a nearby borrow area.

The new ball fields themselves will be constructed using clay recycled from the site's original three fields.

"Our grading contractor, Soil Safe Technologies, is going to recycle the clay from the former fields by taking it off-site, cleaning it and then bringing it back for placement on the new fields," Collins says.

To wrap the project up, the construction team will build a central concrete plaza — which will be the site of that future concessions and restroom building — as well an asphalt-paved parking area.

Work on the Bacon Park Athletic Fields Renovation project began in early September.

"It is a 120-day contract, and it's scheduled to be completed in time for ball season in the spring." Collins says, adding, "It will be a very nice facility when it's done."