By Charles W. Kim, Managing Editor
The township is hoping to finish the installation of artificial turf on four fields in Rowland Park by next week.
”It is weather related,” township spokesman Ron Schmalz said Wednesday. “We hope it is done by the end of the month or early August.”
As of last week, the two baseball diamonds were completed and rolls of the turf were set at one end of one of the football fields.
Township police will be hosting the annual National Night Out in the park Aug. 2.
The township has been working on the project for more than a year when it obtained some grant money from Middlesex County to help put artificial turf on the fields.
In March, the Township Council voted to approve almost $600,000 in bonds to fund its part of the project.
Initially, the municipality was only going to place the turf on either the baseball fields or the football fields, but decided to do both sets of fields when initial bids came in lower than expected earlier this year.
Mr. Schmalz said the town had to bond for a bit more money in order to do both projects at the same time.
”There was a delay in funding the football fields,” Mr. Schmalz said.
During the March meeting, council members hired Applied Landscape Technology Inc., of Montvale to do the work.
The county is matching the $598,000 put in by the township from its own open space fund to complete the $1.6 million project that council members hope increases the safety and usefulness of the fields in the park.
The project was put out to bid as two separate projects, with one asking for a bid on the two baseball fields and another for the football fields.
Engineers had raised the initial estimated cost of the project from $950,000 to about $1.6 million, Township Manager Matt Watkins said in March.
Deputy Mayor Chris Killmurray said at an earlier meeting that artificial turf is more durable than natural grass, and the fields can be used more since they can be played on in the rain.
