A reconstructed baseball diamond for Herrick Park, complete with dugouts, will be playable by "Memorial Day weekend, give or take," Chris Hines, an account manager with the LandTek Group, told the East Hampton Village Board at Friday's meeting. The board determined that the project will have little environmental impact, and approved $535,720.60 for the work, which will come out of the village's general fund.
The new diamond will mark the completion of the athletic portion of the park. A softball field, tennis courts, and field-goal posts were approved in Phase 1A of the park renovation last spring. Basketball courts were approved late last summer and installed this winter.
The ball field will be relocated closer to the sidewalks that converge at the corner of the Douglas E. Dayton Arboretum, on their way to the long-term parking lot and along Muchmore Lane. "The baseball field itself will look very similar to the softball field," said Mr. Hines. "The big difference will be you're going to have a 90-foot field versus a 60-foot field, which is for softball."
The old backstop will be removed and replaced by a new black-vinyl-coated backstop along with a 10-foot-high safety fence. The dugouts will be 30 feet long and 10 feet wide with concrete flooring, protected by an eight-foot fence. The old tilting bleachers will be removed and replaced with two sets of 21-foot-long bleachers with three rows of seating.
It will cost roughly $50,000 to sod the parts of the infield that will now be the outfield, and an additional $43,560 to modify the irrigation system. Most of the cost for the project, $107,100, is for "unclassified excavation" to move the entire field eight feet closer to the sidewalk. The sidewalks will also be replaced, at a cost of $94,300, so that they match the quality and width of the new stretch from the Reutershan Parking Lot to the long-term lot.
"We're going to make the sidewalk eight feet wide all the way back to the overflow parking Lot. That will allow you to have vehicle access and possible food trucks and various other access for events that you're going to host there," said Mr. Hines.
A construction fence will be erected by May.
LandTek won a bid in the Town of Huntington to refurbish its sports fields, as well. Through New York General Municipal Law, East Hampton Village is allowed to "piggyback" on that bid. "The pricing provided in the proposal is based on the Huntington contracts," reads the agreement between the village and LandTek. A cost savings is expected. A similar process was used for the reconstruction of the other sports facilities in the park.
All told, the board approved just over $1.066 million for Phase 1A, but was hit with an additional $290,388 in change orders from LandTek. An additional change order, number 12, was not reflected on village agendas and is not included in that total; the amount could not be verified by deadline. The board approved an additional $240,416 last September for the Roy Lee Mabry Memorial Basketball Courts, with an extra $6,000 in change orders. (Two more change orders, number 1 and 2, are not on village agendas and are not included in the total.) The total cost of the athletic fields is more than $2.1 million.
Of the change orders, Marcos Baladron, the village administrator, said, "Like any renovation, you don't see what you don't see. You uncover things as you build."
Amid the work, the village fended off a lawsuit by park neighbors Michael and Barbara Bebon, who accused the village of reconstructing the park without a comprehensive plan. They feared pickleball courts, a bandshell, and an ice-skating rink would eventually be included. The lawsuit was tossed out by the court at the end of last summer.
In other Herrick Park news, the board approved $29,030 for a security camera upgrade at the park and $8,010 for Derrig and Crawford Landscape Architects for a landscaping plan at the Newtown Lane entrance. Mr. Baladron said that the children's playground would be redone next. He hoped to gain input from the Middle School and local users of the park before he addressed cost.
"Once we're done with the playground, we're done renovating everything that was already there. Then we'll focus on the entrance, but that could be at least a year out," he said.