The Gilroy High School Garcia-Elder Sports Complex caters to hundreds of athletes and their families between the city’s two high schools, Gavilan College and various other community organizations, but with the 2013-14 academic year kicking off Thursday, the Gilroy Unified School District is scrambling to make sure sports fans have a place to sit.
San Jose-based Duquette Engineering was hired by GUSD in June to do a site inspection and reported the stadium bleachers “badly need maintenance and repair” due to “loose screws, loose bolts, bent planks and missing connectors.” The GHS home-side bleachers were deemed “not structurally sound” and the district has since fenced them off for safety reasons.
Due to the home-side bleachers being out of commission, the district was prompted to hold its 2013 GHS graduation ceremony for the first time in the recently renovated quad area, known as Centennial Circle.
Central Coast-based PMSM Architects and Southern Bleachers have been working closely with the district to figure out whether GHS’s bleachers need to be renovated or replaced entirely.
During the Board of Education’s most recent Aug. 15 meeting, Anthony Palazzo, principal architect and director for K-12 Education Design at PMSM, said the primary structural issues in the GHS home-side bleachers lie in the stairs and the structural support of the stairways.
“Over the years, the design has failed,” he explained.
In the interim, GUSD is cooperating with the Division of State Architects to explore short-term options, namely portable bleachers.
“There is not another facility in town where games can be played, so we are just going to make the best of it,” resolved GHS Athletic Director Julie Berggren, who confirmed Mustang athletes will be playing games in the stadium for the entire school year with limited bleachers.
Berggren said the stadium as a whole will not be finished until March or April, but is vague on details beyond that.
“I can tell you it’s going to effect us negatively, the same way it will for Gilroy High School and Christopher High School for their football games,” Gavilan coach Spencer Gilford said. “The fans will be trying to pack into a small area as well as having both sides of the fans intermixed together. I can imagine there will be a lot of persons on the ground as well who will not be able to see the way they’d normally be able to see.”
The visitor-side bleachers on the football field are still in usable condition, and GHS Principal Marco Sanchez says a set of temporary home-side bleachers will be in place by the start of football season in September. Where those bleachers come from and how much they will cost is still up in the air. GHS will play its first football game of the season on Sept. 6 against Live Oak High School on their home field.
“No temporary bleachers are in place at this point. We’re currently waiting for the architects to assess the situation,” Sanchez said Wednesday. “An option is to rent portable bleachers and position them around the end zones near the uprights or maybe the school district could possibly lend bleachers.”
Replacing the home-side bleachers completely could potentially cost $1 million according to Sanchez, who added that construction could take “weeks and weeks.”
Mustangs coach Brian Boyd confidently reaffirmed the bleacher snafu is “not going to effect what we do on the field this season…it’s an unfortunate event with us having a total of seven games — counting the Christopher game — here at home. We expect to try to fill the stadium up this year and that’s probably not going to be easy to do with the bleachers not being able to be used to full capacity. I’ve been told to just worry about the field and go from there — that’s all I can do. I’m not really too concerned with the bleachers stuff right now.”
The issue of wear and tear on Gilroy High School’s stadium has been an issue of concern for a while. Due to the high amount of use by school and city recreation programs, GUSD Superintendent Debbie Flores previously pointed out a “tremendous amount of pressure is being put on the GHS facility,” which is being used “around the clock.”
In addition to the GHS football, field hockey, soccer and track and field teams, the stadium is also home to Christopher High School, Gavilan College and Pop Warner football teams as well as community soccer teams.
Meanwhile, GUSD is waiting for additional feedback from PMSM and Southern Bleachers on what direction to take. The issue will be discussed again at the Board of Education’s next regular meeting Sept. 5.
Other problems include:
• A lack of handrails on stairs
• The configuration of stairs to seats, which creates a trip hazard
• Walkways are 12 inches wide rather than 24 inches, which does not meet current state exiting code
• There are open stair risers and seat risers, which create a falling hazard due to too much open space
One of the bigger issues, according to Palazzo, is that not all of the bleachers, in addition to the press box, are handicap accessible. This is against current accessibility codes.
Palazzo presented Board of Education trustees with four options as potential solutions to the bleacher situation. These options will vary by price (Palazzo said he could not provide any estimates as of yet) and the amount of repairs needed to fulfill the task. The last option is to replace the entire bleacher system and is the most expensive.
The next step in the process is to establish a budget and determine which option should be selected, Palazzo explained during the Aug. 15 meeting.
Trustees appeared unsettled over what the bleacher repairs or possible replacement could cost – particularly trustee Tom Bundros who said that recently implemented accessibility codes for disabled individuals are not reasonable to him. Bundros requested the accessibility code be explained in more depth at the next Sept. 5 meeting.
