The creation of a widely anticipated new baseball stadium at Waveny is on budget and nearing completion, according to the head of the nonprofit organization driving the project.
Site drawing for Coppo Field. Specs by Richter & Cegan Inc.
The Coppo Field project, an approximately $5 million job—$2 million of which is coming from the town, while the nonprofit New Canaan Athletic Foundation is paying the roughly $3 million balance—is expected to significantly increase both the turf footprint and seating surrounding the field in an effort to create more space for the town’s youth athletics programs, NCAF Chairman Mike Benevento told members of the Parks and Recreation Commission last week.
“Our biggest bottleneck from youth all the way through varsity sports is getting access to turf fields,” Benevento told Parks & Rec during its regular meeting, held March 5 in Lapham Center and via videoconference. “Especially in the busy spring. We had a wonderful fall last year but the fall prior to that was a total washout. What this does is really create an additional 33% footprint to our distinct turf footprint which will allow things for obviously baseball use, but everything in the fall from youth field hockey being able to practice in the outfield, flag football being able to use additional fields, any other sport really.”
Coppo will serve New Canaan’s youth, middle school and high school baseball programs, and features a new varsity field for the Rams (info here on how to support the project).
An early estimated completion date of April 1 may no longer be attainable due to some weather-related construction delays, he said.
“We had a tough February from a weather perspective,” Benevento said. “The biggest issue there is the frost. They’re not able to grade the area when there’s frost in the ground.”
Yet even with the delays, Benevento estimated that the field should be ready for play towards the end of April.
“It’ll probably push us back to somewhere between April 15 and April 21,” he said. “We’ve all made a big push because the varsity baseball schedule is supposed to start on April 15th, 14th, I think, and there’s three games. That may not seem like a lot, but it does represent roughly 30% of their home schedule this year. [New Canaan High School Athletic Director] Jay [Egan] said that he may be able to shift one of those games, so I think it’s going to be a little bit of a scramble, and there will be work that has to be done still on the exterior, but I do think we’re in really good shape to have that surface being used this year.”
The NCAF has opted not to start any other big projects until Coppo field is complete.
“That’s really been the focus of the Athletic Foundation,” Benevento said. “We haven’t started to tackle any other major enhancement projects until we get this one done, but it’s been a long time coming, and we’re super excited about it.”