Only details left for deal on Albi turf

The press conference was held Thursday.

The City of Spokane and the two school districts that call Albi Stadium home for football announced they had reached an agreement on replacing the facility’s worn turf, and football would return in the fall.

Now the real work begins.

“The conceptual agreement has been made, the details haven’t even started,” said Mark Anderson, Spokane Schools’ Associate Superintendent for School Support Services. “We have told the mayor (Dennis Hession) we want to get the details done by the end of April. As the users of Albi, solely for our purpose, we are going to make sure that detail part happens.”

So why the public announcement? The Spokane and Mead school districts felt they needed a definitive answer by April 1, Anderson said, to ensure the installation of a new surface by the start of the 2006 football season. With the conceptual agreement in place, the districts will move forward with putting in a new surface, with the Spokane schools taking the lead.

“We talked with Mead and they basically were willing to let us, since we kind of have the horsepower, to take the lead on and pay for services that are needed,” Anderson said, adding the district’s Executive Director of Facilities and Planning, John Mannix, will lead the project.

Finding out who the district will work with at the city is the next step, according to Anderson.

“That’s my next call to the mayor,” he said. “I’ve learned that, on the city side of things, Albi’s become an orphan, without a true lead (person). That’s where they have to step up and identify someone who has the authority to work out this.”

The perfect scenario for the schools, according to Anderson, would put the district in charge of the day-to-day maintenance related to its events – something the city does under the current lease agreement – and leave the capital projects in the hands of the city.

For example, if a light in the scoreboard burns out, the district would replace it. If the scoreboard itself burns out, the city would replace it.

“Conceptually, speaking just for the district, we would take care of, as a user, those things we need to use it, and cleaning up, all those kind of things,” Anderson said. “The more major things that are a part of the city’s stewardship of the infrastructure, they need to take care of that.”

The district already has a design and engineering firm assisting the installation and is in the process of forming a committee to decide the brand of artificial turf to purchase. The committee will include football coaches, soccer coaches and activities coordinators, Anderson said.

Preliminary estimates put the cost of new turf at between $800,000 and $1 million for the installation, Anderson said, though the cost may be less, depending on the amount of prep work needed.

A repaired Albi Stadium will be a possible site for state playoff football games at the larger levels of competition, according to Terry Cavendar, Assistant Executive Director of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association.

“The letter that came out earlier from Brett Sports (calling the turf unplayable) was kind of a death statement for that turf that’s sitting in there right now,” Cavendar said, noting another issue, the facility’s cost, does limit its uses for the smaller schools. “But this is good news for us. It gives a viable place to play 2A, 3A and 4A games.

“We have traditionally tried to have a two- or three-game venue on this side of the mountains, so we would look at that again. And certainly Albi becomes a viable facility for us again.”