One message was abundantly clear at last week’s public meeting on the proposed Wescott Field renovation: the project will move along as fast or slow as the money will allow.

Monday, August 16, 1999

One message was abundantly clear at last week’s public meeting on the proposed Wescott Field renovation: the project will move along as fast or slow as the money will allow.

"It’s all going to be driven by the dollars raised," said Amy Baskin, the Austin Board of Education president who sits on the independent committee that has spent three years plotting Wescott Field’s future.

As of now, that future will cost $3.8 million. Should the renovation project pass Thursday’s school board vote, the first step to a possible April 1, 2000 groundbreaking would be the convening of a fundraising committee.

"If you’re interested in serving on it, let us know," Baskin told the 30 or so people in attendance at last Thursday’s meeting.

The job of the committee won’t be easy. All along, the Wescott Field Committee has maintained the project will be paid for using money raised in the community. Before shovel finds dirt, the committee will need to raise about half of the project’s total cost.

Architect David Kane, of the Rochester’s Kane and Johnson Architects, Inc., and committee members agree that the project may have to be done in phases.

Everybody is in agreement on the first two phases – the building of a nine-lane track-and-field and the rehabilitation of the competition football/soccer stadium. Those two things would need to be done in conjunction, because the idea of renovating Wescott Field grew out of the need for a new track-and-field. To simply rebuild the football stadium, which calls for the elimination of the current track, would go cross-grain to the project’s beginnings.

In July, Kane told the committee that it would need approximately $2 million to complete those first two phases of the project.

Site development – like the addition of interconnecting walkways and two ticket/concession/bathroom plazas – could follow at a later time as more funds became available.

When one audience member asked Kane how long the project would take, he answered: "If we begin April 1, it could get moving quickly … But, remember, it’ll be budget-driven."