Five months ago, in a report to the town, Gale Associates concluded that Harvard needed at least one more full-sized multipurpose rectangular athletic field to accommodate the play and practice of its soccer and lacrosse teams and to lessen the wear and tear on its four overused multipurpose fields. The report said the town was also short two youth-sized rectangular fields and one 60-foot diamond suitable for softball.
The company recommended that either Harvard Park or a Depot Road field be converted to artificial turf and lighted, a modification the company said would add the equivalent of two to three fields to the town’s inventory.
But the use of artificial turf is controversial and Gale’s recommendation was not well received by the Board of Health, the Climate Initiative Committee, and at least one member of the Select Board when it was presented to that board at their Sept. 19, 2023, meeting. A proposal for an artificial turf field on Pond Road was nixed by the Department of Environmental Protection in 2018.
At this Tuesday’s Select Board meeting, the town’s recreation director, Anne McWaters, and the Parks and Recreation field liaison, Marisa Steele, offered three options for dealing with the most pressing shortage, the lack of a fifth multipurpose rectangular field, as well as a vision for a future centralized athletic complex on the town and Conservation Commission-owned properties known collectively as Harvard Woods. The area is located northwest of Harvard Park, beyond the track, and is crisscrossed by trails used by cross-country runners and walkers of all ages.
Because the deteriorating McCurdy Track at Harvard Park needs to be replaced within the next 12 to 18 months, McWaters said it made sense to include in that project the reconstruction of the infield used by soccer and lacrosse teams. All three options for an additional field or its equivalent include replacement of the track and a new infield with either a natural or artificial turf surface. The cost to replace the track, which has a lifetime of approximately 10 years, is an estimated $1 million.
The first option proposes to rent fields at Devens and bus teams there for practices and games, but it would not add any fields in Harvard. The second option would convert the natural turf field at Harvard Park to artificial turf and add lights to create the equivalent of one to two additional fields. The third option proposes to acquire a 6-acre plot on Old Mill Road currently under the jurisdiction of the Conservation Commission and construct a full-sized soccer field there.
Cost estimates: $1.8 to $6.1 million
The estimated costs of the three options range from a low of $1.8 million for the first to $6.1 million for the third. McWaters noted that the second and third options would add a field to the town’s inventory by either increasing the capacity of Harvard Park or constructing a new one on Old Mill Road, a decision that would require Town Meeting to approve a transfer of the land from the Conservation Commission to the town. But she said much more information was needed to price each of the three options, especially the cost of properly maintaining an artificial turf field.
In a Tuesday morning interview in her new office in the old library, McWaters said she and Steele had based their recommendations on the Gale Associates study and a just-completed study by BSC Group. BSC was hired to determine whether additional athletic facilities could be located in the Harvard Woods adjacent to Harvard Park. The answer was yes, with the Old Mill Road parcel an especially suitable site.
“We’ve been doing studies on the need for new fields for 15 years,” she said. “It’s silly that we continue to throw money at studies about this and we don’t do anything about it.” Maybe it meant having to rent fields at Devens at an estimated cost of $60,000 per year, she said, but something needed to be done now.
McWaters,who was joined by Steele for the interview, told the Press that solving the multipurpose field shortage was an urgent priority, but they regarded it the first phase of a two-phase plan. “We have a long-term plan. The first part of it will address the track and fields and, hopefully, gets us a little bit closer to where we need to be. But we do have a much bigger plan that will get us exactly where we need to be and offer more amenities that the town has been asking for,” said McWaters.
A summary of the three options for resolving the shortage of multipurpose rectangular athletic fields and the long-term vision for a Harvard Woods athletic complex was distributed with this week’s Select Board agenda. For further information look for the Feb. 6 agenda at www.harvard-ma.gov/select-board.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Select Board Chair Rich Maiore asked McWaters and Steele to narrow their three options to one or two and return in a couple of months with a more complete recommendation for the board. Maiore said he hoped to have a plan ready to be acted upon at Fall Town Meeting.
