Glenwood's Field Of Dreams?

A state-of-the-art, privately-funded football stadium and sports complex featuring an artificial field surface and multi-tiered grandstand with a mezzanine view.

An expanded press box, locker, meeting and training rooms, new bleachers for home and visitors sides with seating up to 2,700, including 84 premium seats.

A scenic path linked by a pedestrian bridge to a natural prairie, more parking and a dedicated bus and vehicle unloading zone.

All of this is possible with a bold renovation plan for the Glenwood Athletic Complex unveiled by the Glenwood Booster Club at the Aug. 10 Glenwood School Board meeting.

The plan, which was presented by booster club president Scott Miller and Glenwood Activities Director Jeff Bissen, shows a detailed architectural rendering of a brick, two-story stadium with large patio area entrance and a curved entry drive off Sivers Road. The plans were done by HSR Associates, Inc., a La Crosse, Wis., architectural, engineering and interior design firm, at a cost of $3,500 paid for by the booster club. The total renovation would transform the current athletic complex, with its aging bleachers, field house and outbuildings into a modern showpiece capable of hosting football, soccer, youth programs and marching band competitions to rival any facility in southwest Iowa.

The three phase project is expected to cost $5.2 million with all but a fraction coming from a capital fundraising campaign the booster club hopes to kick off as early as this fall. Glenwood Superintendent Devin Embray said with funding already in the budget pipeline for maintenance repairs, including a new track, and limited renovations on the site, the school district would likely pick up approximately  $200,000 of the new complex’s price tag if it goes forward.
The ambitious plan for the athletic complex resulted from discussions among the Athletic Complex Visioning Committee, a group formed last August by the booster club, working closely with Bissen. The committee, which is made up of school officials, coaches and community members, spent nearly a year coming up with a design plan for the site before HSR returned with a conceptual drawing.

“At this point this is just visionary and planning for the future and we will go through the steps to see if a project like this is feasible with private donors and funds,” said Bissen. “There’s no tax payers money being used here and this would be funded entirely with grants and private funds in the future at Glenwood.”

What the committee hopes to buy with their capital investment is a ground-up overhaul of an existing athletic complex well past its prime, said Bissen, and replace it with a facility that could benefit the district for the next 30 to 40 years.
The current athletic complex’s fieldhouse and the concession stand, girls locker room and coaches offices building, which routinely floods during heavy rains from the nearby Sivers Road drainage ditch, are in dire need of replacement. In addition to the flooding, the age of the buildings continues to require more and more maintenance and repairs. The field house and restrooms are currently serviceable but are becoming outdated, according to Bissen.

The complex’s visiting bleachers also need to be repaired and expanded to better accommodate visiting fans. The press box is also one of the smallest in the Hawkeye 10 Conference.

Glenwood’s current athletic track is also in need of replacement. Installed in 1999, with a life expectancy of 15 to 18 years, the track was on schedule to be replaced over the next few years at an estimated cost of $100,000.

The football field in itself is in great shape, Bissen said, but it continues to take a lot of water and man power to maintain. With last year’s wet fall, Glenwood was forced to host it first “home” football game of the season on the artificial turf at Plattsmouth High School at a cost to the district of $1,900. Artificial turf would give Glenwood options for practices and games with high school, middle school and youth sports programs.

The district’s marching bands would also be able to utilize the field for practice and contests and in the spring, the school’s soccer teams could practice and play games there as needed.

The proposed plan calls for a demolition of the current buildings and grandstand. It would also re-configure not only the ingress and egress of the stadium via a center tunnel and staircases to the mezzanine above the bleachers, but also the footprint of the entire athletic complex. The football field itself would be shifted approximately 20 yards to the west with a bus drive entrance added off Sivers Road to allow drop off and pick up and, during track meets, parking for more than a dozen school buses.

With a design for the complex in hand, the next step is to secure the blessing of the school board and to evaluate the project’s financial feasibility.

The school board is expected to meet Aug. 26 for a work session where everything from the project’s funding, naming right possibilities and overall impact on the district is expected to be discussed. Since the project was not an agenda item the board could not vote on signing off on the booster’s club plans at last Monday’s meeting.
Board Member Dave Blum said he wouldn’t speak for other board members nor speculate on what might come from that Aug. 26 meeting. But Blum he did say he is in full support of the project.

“I’m on the (Visioning) committee so I’d seen the plan,” Blum said. “But I know others have just now seen it and I do think the board is in support. I’m not going to put words in anyone’s mouth, that’s why we go through the formality of vote, but I got a lot of positive feedback. Basically all the booster club is asking for is our blessing to go onto the next step. They’re not asking for money.”

The booster club, who would be the overseer of the project, is currently planning meetings with several capital funding campaign firms to get information on how to best proceed and to determine if Glenwood has the potential to make this project a reality.

“As a committee, we want to make sure we have all the details in order before we reveal our design and establish our fundraising options moving forward,” Bissen said.

Blum, who co-owns Blum Brothers construction and has worked on projects of similar size and scope, agrees the task to raise the funds for the project is tall, but not impossible, he said, pointing at a similar capital fundraising campaign at Treynor as a successful model Glenwood can build on. Treynor’s project, with a price tag of just over $4 million, included a a new Field Turf football stadium, bleachers, track, a press box, restroom facilities and concession stand on a new site near the school.

Blum added the  Glenwood project, being a multi-phased, 3-to-5 year plan, is still in its infancy. Not hurrying the project in these early stages is crucial, he says, to its potential success.
School board president Theresa Romens agrees.

“This isn’t going to happen tomorrow,” Romens said. “But if you have a real good logistical plan, then you work the plan. It’s like a business plan and a business plan takes a year to get into place then you see how it all fits together. You have to look at the practicality of it. We’re two or four years out but we’re looking at trying to vision for something that needs to be done.”

Romens, Blum and Embray all agree the plan is as ambitious as it is bold; all three called the plan state-of-the-art and forward thinking, saying it meets the district’s needs while praising the design’s functionality and long-term impact on the community.

The site plan, in addition to the athletic complex makeover, also includes opportunities for green spaces around the property. Embray is working on securing an agreement with the Mills County Historical Society, who owns the triangle of land to the south of the athletic complex across Keg Creek, to develop in tandem with the potential project. That site formerly housed the Glenwood Native American Earth Lodge and the plan is to convert the area into a natural prairie and add additional parking connected to the complex by a pedestrian bridge. Embray also thinks the possibility exists to tie that trail into a long-rumored Wabash Trace spur, if it ever comes to fruition.

“None of that has been finalized but they (historical society) seem to be very open to being a partner with the school,” Embray said.

The district entered into a similar deal with the City of Glenwood who is building a $5 million public aquatic center on land just west of the high school for a 2016 opening.

With the district in its final phase of construction on the high school’s  $3.8 million auxiliary gym addition and the recent groundbreaking of the aquatic center, Embray isn’t worried about district residents being concerned about another large-scale project.

The school’s gymnasium project was financed by a revenue bond through the district’s Secure an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) dollars it receives through a one-cent sales tax levy. The swimming pool is a city project whose $5 million budget is being paid via 20-year bonds secured by local option sales tax funds.

The athletic complex makeover will be funded almost entirely with private money. No taxpayer funds will go to the athletic complex proposal that were not already ear marked to do so, Embray said.

Embray does admit the booster club faces a daunting task of raising $5 million but that goal is “doable.”

“I think it can happen,” he said. “You just don’t know until you try. I think this can set the Glenwood school district up for the next 50 or 75 years. It puts the district in a progressive, moving forward growth model and the way we’re going about doing it is not putting a burden on the taxpayers. I think that’s a huge win-win.”