District narrows Grace78 (Cam South) site options; RLPS operations study and civil engineering to shape next steps

Doctor Long briefed the board on the Cam South (also referenced as Grace78) site-location options, the district’s outreach with the borough and progress on an operations study intended to inform storage, transportation and consolidation decisions.

Long said the district reduced five early placement diagrams to two preferred options (labeled C and D in the materials) and has discussed the plans with the borough recreation department and borough manager, who the presentation reported welcomed redevelopment ideas and the district’s intent to preserve an existing parking lot that serves the municipal swimming pool. Long said the district sent RFPs for civil engineers, received four responses, and expects to retain a civil engineer by the end of the week or the beginning of the next week to begin site due diligence.

She said RLPS (the consultant) could not attend the meeting and that district staff presented RLPS’s preliminary operation-study work instead. The RLPS team has used 360-degree photographic surveys of buildings and sites to inform an operational diagram. Long said the district will continue the operational review to determine whether functions such as transportation, storage and reserve facilities can be consolidated to improve efficiency.

The presentation showed the property context around Interchange 81, McKinley Street and Stauffer’s and noted the design trade-offs among building placement, retaining practice fields vs. stadium placement, and how proximity to I‑81 could affect noise for athletic fields. Board members discussed potential mitigation (tree buffers or walls) and asked whether stadium placement could be altered; Long said the work is exploratory and such questions would be pursued with the design team.

Projected schedule items shown to the board included schematic design through November, design development to April, construction documents through September 2026, bidding in the fall and a construction start in February (the presentation did not specify the calendar year for that February start). Long emphasized that traffic studies, drainage and borough land-development review could affect the schedule and the final plan.

Long also described an operations study that identified three district facilities for review: a multi-story building on the corner (described in the packet as a storage building), the transportation building on Satter Press Road, and the reserve center (Joanne Bowen building). The operations study is intended to test consolidation opportunities and whether functions can be co-located to reduce overall footprint and cost.

Board members noted concerns about stadium noise and sightlines near I‑81, losing the softball field in some configurations and how work should be staged if budgeting requires delaying one of the projects. Long said the district remains able to sequence bids — the intention is to proceed as if all projects could go forward simultaneously but to defer bidding on a building if the budget requires it. The Committee of the Whole received the update as information; no formal action was taken.