Tim LaTorra’s athletes practice and play on the hardwood floors of the Concord High School gym. A multimillion-dollar investment in Memorial Field won’t change that.
But the condition of the field still affects the basketball team and the future of his players, he said.
“We actually lost our point guard to a knee injury on that football field. Stepped in one of the potholes,” he said. “He’s been battling that knee injury even into his college career as a football player.”
A crowd dotted with crimson caps and hoodies at Monday night’s city council meeting pleaded with the council to move forward with the next step of planning for a ground-up rehabilitation of the city-owned athletic complex.
The council voted to bond $600,000, matched by funds from the Concord School District, for professional architects and engineers to transform new mock-ups for the fields into an actionable design. That process will take about a year.
The scope of the final product – and how it would be paid for in a city with two school districts and youth sports ecosystems – is yet to be determined. But the vote was a commitment in spirit from city officials that some kind of major improvements are in the pipeline for the park, which is sometimes referred to as ‘The Swamp.’
With poor drainage, torn-down bleachers and a decommissioned track, the field is both an embarrassment to Concord’s stature as the state capital and a drag on the people — young and old — who rely on it as a space to play and train, residents, student-athletes and coaches told councilors.
Every football game, Alique Valeras marches through the complex and across the field with his alto saxophone, struggling to maintain the forward-facing focus the marching band requires of him while not tripping over the lumps and cracks in the pavement and grass. In the past, he and his bandmates would hype the crowd from the stands. Now, the bleachers are torn down.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Well, I don’t want to be here,'” Valeras said.
Upgraded facilities aren’t just for the athletes; they are for the musicians, parents, and community to come watch and cheer, Valeras said.
Mason Romboldi runs track at Concord High. He was forced to practice his block starts in the school’s hallways. He wondered whether a nationally ranked star triple jumper who left CHS this year would have stayed if the school had a usable surface.
Monalisa Eaton is among the city residents burdened by high taxes and rents. But when her grandson started playing football this year, she wished he wouldn’t, fearing injury.
“I was from a poor family, and my kids were poor and I’m still poor,” she said. “But the point is, how many kids have to get hurt for us to really buckle down and fix what we need to fix?”
Many Penacook residents have asked the city to reconsider the 50-50 split on costs with the Concord School District. Merrimack Valley school taxpayers already cover the costs of their own student athletic facilities, they’ve argued, and shouldn’t have to shoulder an investment in a facility that is primarily used by Concord School District teams and programs.
Concord school teams and programs are a solid majority of the reserved uses at the complex. It is owned fully by the city and overseen by the city’s parks department. Not all youth sports that rely on the facility are affiliated with Concord Schools, multiple people who spoke to the council noted.
Concord and Penacook residents, including members of the Merrimack Valley School Board, urged the council to hold off on taking the step of approving the contract. Not because the fields don’t need work, they said, but because they feared setting the construction process in motion.
“Each match makes the split harder to change,” said Jessica Wheeler Russell, a Penacook resident and Merrimack Valley School Board member. “I understand that you’re saying that doesn’t mean it’s set in stone, but I don’t trust that. By the time this $22 million construction arrives, we’ll be told it is already settled.”
She and others wanted the cost-sharing agreement to be finalized before the project moved forward. Those calls were heard, but not heeded by the group, though their argument about defraying costs from the city’s pocketbook onto the Concord School District’s has won sympathy among several city councilors.
A council majority agreed that the fundamental questions about who would pay for and oversee a reinvigorated Memorial Field remained unresolved. But councilors determined that the question could be addressed and answered in the next year.
City Councilor Judith Kurtz acknowledged a deep-seated distrust among Penacook residents toward city government and the complicated governing dynamic between the City Council and the Concord School Board. It is also true that pushing off capital projects for another day has caught up with Concord.
“We have an opportunity and an obligation to be a functioning city that manages two governing bodies as a team for the benefit of our children,” Kurtz said. “And, we have an obligation to make sure that the 10% of our residents who live in Penacook trust that we are representing them.”
Among those who voted against moving forward – councilors Stacey Brown, Michele Horne and Kris Schultz – the price tag of the project weighed heavily, too.
As currently projected, the first and most substantial phase of the renovation comes in at just under $14 million in total. At the earliest, design would take a year and a decision about construction would come up for a vote in December of next year. Then construction would run through the spring of 2029.
It’s likely – given the financial pinch both the city and schools are feeling – that the second, $8 million phase wouldn’t come to fruition for some time, and some school board members have pushed for an even more streamlined scope.
Talks between the city and Concord schools about how to pay for the project, and which parts of the design will be pursued, will unfold over the next months or year.
“Whether we reach any kind of agreement with the school district or not, that facility needs to be repaired,” At-Large Councilor Fred Keach said. “We’re going to need to do it one way or the other, so why not do it now?”
