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Fort Recovery's football stadium lights will be upgraded this summer. The project entails retrofitting 44 lights on four poles with energy-efficient LEDs.
FORT RECOVERY - School board members signed off on a $144,900 lighting retrofit project for Barrenbrugge Athletic Park, the first of two potential upgrades to the football stadium.
At Monday night's regular meeting, board members first authorized superintendent Tony Stahl to enter into a participation agreement with Sourcewell Cooperative Purchasing Program of Minnesota.
They then approved a motion to accept a bid of $144,900 submitted by Techline Sports Lighting through the cooperative purchasing program for the stadium lighting project, which will entail retrofitting 44 lights on four poles with energy-efficient LEDs.
Additionally, Techline will install programmable show lights that can add bursts of luminous panache for such occasions as team or player entrances, touchdowns and halftime shows.
The current stadium lights date back to 1992.
"So this is something that we've been working toward over the last couple of months as part of our kind of continual capital project plan," Stahl told board members. "The stadium lighting is original, so we're looking at retrofitting and upgrading it to LED out there."
The Fort Recovery Athletic Boosters have agreed to chip in roughly $12,000 for the show lights, according to Stahl.
"(That) is kind of a little bit of an extra adder on that process," he said. "You can kind of program them to flash for entrances, scored touchdowns or during the halftime band show - or if we do any sort of production out there. So the athletic boosters were going to kind of pay for that project."
Board members opted to seek bids through the Sourcewell Cooperative Purchasing Program, a government partner and public entity in Minnesota that, among other things, solicits cooperative contracts to governments, schools and other public agencies.
Stahl spoke highly of contractor Techline Sports Lighting.
"They have a good local service area. They come out a little bit south of Fort Wayne," Stahl said. "They're fairly close, accessible, can get here if we have problems. They've done some recent projects at Wapak, in Greenville when they had their tornado and redid their stadium."
The project is expected to be carried out over the summer.
The current Fort Recovery football stadium lights date back to 1992.
A second improvement project for the football field is currently being considered as well.
"I do think there's another kind of phase to this that we've been talking about for several months and kind of partnership with the boosters," Stahl told The Daily Standard after the meeting.
Some possibilities include bleacher upgrades, adding a structure to the ticket shed for the home locker room and constructing a second, standalone building on the northeast corner of the stadium for the visitor locker room, training facility and referee area.
"We hope to have, I would say maybe a conceptual kind of plan or a little bit more firm direction maybe sometime early summer," he said. "I know there's a couple of districts that have done similar projects. You're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. So probably in that neighborhood, but we don't have any sort of cost back yet or anything like that."
Board members also approved transferring $500,000 from the general fund to the capital project fund, athletic facilities.
"That's to help fund the project between the lighting and the future project at the football field. It's going to be happening this summer and hopefully the following summer," said treasurer Deanna Knapke. "That $500,000 for this fiscal year, that would put our total transfer this year at a million dollars. We did $500,000 for PI (permanent improvement account), which we were required to do per our income tax."
In December, board members approved a capital plan as part of an ongoing collaboration with design firm Garmann Miller to maintain their schools, facilities and grounds from 2026 to 2035.
The plan involves about $10.75 million in maintenance over the 10-year period. It includes roofing/building envelope maintenance for elementary middle school, $1.15 million; roofing/building envelope maintenance for high school, $1.73 million; mechanical/general maintenance for elementary middle school, $1.6 million; mechanical/general maintenance for high school, $1.63 million; asphalt/concrete for elementary middle school, $905,000; asphalt/concrete for high school, $445,000; district transportation, $1.26 million; district athletic facilities, $1.15 million; building furniture for elementary middle school, $450,00; and building furniture for high school, $450,000.
The school board meets next at 6:30 p.m. April 20 in the Fort Recovery Community Room.
